


You Left Me in The Dark

by quipquipquip



Series: "No Dawn, No Day" Universe [3]
Category: Batgirl (Comic), Batman (Comics), Hellblazer, Knight and Squire
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-04
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quipquipquip/pseuds/quipquipquip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The alternate, gentler end to "No Dawn, No Day." Damian Wayne has made a demon deal, and Steph is going to pull out all the stops to save his soul---whether or not he believes he should be saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She couldn’t sleep, though her body screamed for it. She was exhausted from the patrol, emotionally run dry from their argument, but too weirdly energized to even close her eyes. There were the usual bruises, but some not-as-usual ones were already making themselves known. Damian had left marks, violet fingerprints and a raw ache between her legs. Roughness wasn’t unusual between them, but that usually ended in them collapsing in a boneless, satiated pile---the good kind of aches and bruises. This hadn’t been good in any way. He’d finished, and when his deft thumb had pressed against her clit, she’d pushed him away. She hadn’t let him get her off---couldn’t, because she’d been too torn up, too sensitive, both physically and emotionally. She’d wanted to make it a good send-off---wanted him to know that she didn’t hate him---but it’d hurt too much. He’d made a low noise of derision, rolling over so that his back was to her.

Steph stared at Damian’s back until his breathing deepened, then slowed. Getting out of bed without waking him wasn’t easy, but she was Batwoman. Sneaking around was a big part of the job description.

She’d didn’t want to leave, hated that she had to, but she couldn’t watch him kill himself over and over again. She couldn’t be a part of his life when he was going to use her as a desperate lifeline, bringing her back from the dead if the Brown luck kicked in too hard and took her before her time. Something had changed in Damian after he’d told her about the deal he’d made. He’d let go of his sense of self-preservation. When he’d been trying to pretend that he was still mortal, he’d fought clean and he’d fought smart. When he’d dropped the pretense, he’d become manic. Sometimes, she thought he wanted to bleed and die. Sometimes, she thought that he truly believed he deserved it. It was selfish, but she didn’t want to watch him do that to himself---it was changing him, making him harden into something self-hating and bitter. Masochism didn’t even begin to describe what he was putting himself through.

It was horrific. It wasn’t okay, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise. A part of her hoped--- _prayed_ , and she wasn’t the praying type---that if she left, he’d take a critical look at what he was doing. Maybe, he’d quit killing himself over approval he would never get and just---just _wake up._ Maybe he’d start fighting for himself, instead of just fighting himself. She had to hope, but hope wasn’t coming as easily as it usually did.

She wondered if this was how Dick had felt the night he’d left. If the search for an answer hadn’t killed him, she would’ve been tempted to pack her bags and take the same trip. That’s what she did---who she was. Stephanie Brown fought for her loved ones, even when they wouldn’t do it themselves.

This time, that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t _make_ him want mortality. She couldn’t _make_ him want his own soul. She couldn’t _make_ him want her love more than the love of his dead father. It was his choice.

So, she had to go. She’d decided that she had to go before they’d returned to the cave that night, but she still hadn’t wrapped her head around the enormity of what leaving entailed. If she left, she wouldn’t be coming back. He wouldn’t allow it. Steph knew that on a rational level, but it hadn’t sunken in. She didn’t pack like she had finality in mind---she barely packed at all. She suited up, then threw a random, blind assortment of clothing into a dufflebag.

It wasn’t until that moment that she realized exactly how rooted to him she’d become. She had no money of her own anymore, and bringing along her Wayne account card was not going to happen. The Compact was Wayne property, and most of her few material possessions weren’t worth lugging with her. She’d settled in, and she’d settled deep. Their partnership hadn’t felt like it’d ever dissolve, so she’d neglected to safeguard herself. This wasn’t a scenario she’d envisioned, much less planned for.

Damian had been right. Without him, she didn’t have much.

Steph had her suit, a dufflebag full of clothes, and no idea what to do with herself or where to go.

 _”Mmmmraiow?”_

Alfred’s questioning meow made Steph almost jump clear out of her skin. She’d been packing and dressing as quickly and silently as possible, knowing that Damian wouldn’t be asleep for long, and that if he caught her mid-exit the ensuing fight would make their earlier argument look like a mild exchange of pleasantries.

But it was the cat that’d caught her, not his master. She shushed him with a finger to her lips, regretting not closing the door more firmly behind her when she’d slipped out of his bedroom.

 _”Shhhh._ Don’t go all guard dog on me. I’ve gotta go---I’m sorry.”

Alfred’s ears flicked back, and he meowed again, louder.

 _”Shhhh!”_ Steph whisper-hissed, shouldering her half-full bag and walking out of her room. She closed the door behind her, justifying that Damian would look for her there first, so Alfred wouldn’t be trapped for long.

He wasn’t having any of that. There was an audible thump as the cat _bodychecked_ the door, yowling. He scratched desperately, making such a racket that she had to open to door again and let him out. He’d puffed out into a furious black and white ball, ears flattened and tail lashing.

Steph knelt down and stroked the top of his head.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Even if the cat was only bothering her because she wasn’t sticking to her usual schedule and he didn’t like being shut into rooms, talking to him made her feel better. She couldn’t say goodbye to Damian, so Alfred would have to do. “I love you, and I love D, but he’s crashing. If I go, he has a chance of pulling out of it. If I stay, he has no reason to change what he’s doing.”

Alfred stretched up on his back legs, paws on her knees, and headbutted her hands until she rubbed his ears.

“Take care of him, Alfie. He’s going to think I’m abandoning him, so he’ll need some serious TLC when he wakes up. Don’t let anything happen to him.”

The cat looked up at her with owlish yellow eyes, like he understood the task she’d given him. He slid to all fours again, padding silently back down the hall.

Stephanie zipped up her boots and left. She walked about two miles, not even paying attention to the direction she’d chosen. She would have gone further, maybe made it to the city proper, but she was running on fumes. If she didn’t get away quickly enough, _really_ away, she’d double back. Staying would be the worst thing for him, so she choked down what little remained of her pride and popped open one of the pouches on her utility belt that she’d mentally labeled _only in category five emergencies._

She stared at the communicator for at least three full minutes before she screwed her eyes shut and dialed the code.

It didn’t even make it to a second ring before Tim picked up.

“Steph?” There was panic in his voice, the sharpness of it dulled by sleep-clogged confusion. She’d woken him up---and duh, it was a quarter after five and all the good vigilante boys and girls had hung up their capes for the night.

“Hi,” she said, forcing cheerfulness with such ferocity, she barely sounded like herself. “It’s me. Sorry about the hour.”

“S’okay,” Tim mumble-slurred. She could just _see_ his expression on the other end of the line---a deep worry-line creasing his forehead as he rubbed his eyes and tried to wake himself up. He hadn’t changed as much since age fourteen as he’d like to think he had. Some quirks, some mannerisms, were static. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I---it’s not an emergency, but.”

Steph paused. Realized she was sore and tired to the point of tears, penniless and holding a dufflebag full of more clean underwear than actual clothes. It’d been a while since Brown Luck had sent her hurtling toward rock bottom this quickly.

“Have you got a couch or something your favorite ex could crash on?” She asked, and tried hard not to sound like she wanted to cry.

Tim swore under his breath, at length. She could just barely hear a mumbled second voice in the background.

“What did he do?” he demanded, all traces of sleepiness chased away by anger.

To have her old Boy Wonder getting self-righteously worked up on her behalf _hurt_. She dragged in a ragged breath.

“Long story. I left. I just---I need somewhere to stay for a few days. Somewhere not Gotham.”

“Where are you at?” A beat. “Never mind. Just keep talking.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, sagging. “This isn’t like me. You know this isn’t like me. I’m not this person.”

“Hey,” he said, his tone gentling. “I know. You don’t have to apologize, Steph. I’m glad you called. I didn’t think you still had this communicator.”

She’d stored it in her belt, untouched, for two years. They’d been a good two years, so she hadn’t thought she’d ever need to use it. Still, Bruce Wayne had drilled in at least a basic level of preparedness into every bird and bat he personally trained. She couldn’t shake it.

“Better safe than sorry, right?” Steph said with a faint, watery laugh. “I---”

“Hey!” boomed a voice from above. She craned her head back so quickly, she almost gave herself whiplash.

Kon hovered in the air, dressed only in loose pajama pants. His hair was still flattened on one side from sleep.

“A little bird told me you could use a pick-up,” he said, and grinned. It wasn’t a Superman smile, but it was close enough.

“I’ll see you in a few,” Tim said, hanging up.

 

*

 

She’d expected Tim to give her a thorough interrogation as soon as she walked in the door, but he respected that she was a goddamned mess and didn’t want to talk about it. She let him assume the worst, because she didn’t want to outline the complexities of the situation. She knew that if she tried to lay it all out end to end, she’d start crying, and then he’d get even more worked up. He didn’t have a lot of love in him when it came to Damian, so it didn’t take much to get him pissed off at his youngest brother. He knew her, and he knew that she didn’t leave someone for just _any_ old reason. It took more than hell and high water to fracture her loyalty.

If Tim’s expression hadn’t just screamed _I knew this would happen_ , maybe she would have sat down with him and talked and sobbed her exhausted little heart out. She couldn’t handle him telling her how bad Damian was, because _that_ wasn’t the reason she’d left.

It wasn’t her that he’d been hurting. Not directly, at least. She’d been his secondary victim.

Tim had fussed over her for a while, setting her up in a spare bedroom with pillows and blankets and express instructions to tell him if she needed anything. Steph thanked him, nodded, and fell into bed as soon as she’d wriggled out of her suit and boots. Too tired to cry, she’d slipped off into a dreamless sleep.

Damian called Tim early the next morning, just to make sure she was with him. He didn’t beg her to come back, and, according to Tim, he barely even sounded upset. It’d pissed Tim off, since he’d hung up after getting confirmation that yes, she was staying with him and yes, she was fine, but Steph knew better. She’d hit his pride where it hurt, so he’d gone full-out ice queen. He wouldn’t come after her. There would be no desperate wooing, no begs for her to come back, no promises to change. That wasn’t how Damian worked.

The cape community was full of dirty gossips, so it wasn’t long before she started getting calls and drop-in visits. Kara was first---there the next morning, stress-cooking piles of pancakes and talking a mile a minute. Literally, a full mile a minute; her words bled together beyond human comprehension until Steph had hugged her and told her that she was okay. It was an uncomfortable turn around, hugging Kara when she was the one falling apart in slow motion, but Steph was a giver and a caretaker. If she concentrated on herself for too long, she’d lose it.

The parade of friends ‘just stopping by to say hi’ was encouraging, in a way. Sometimes, she forgot how many friends she actually had. Gotham was a dark smirch on the map, anymore---not many chose to visit there, much less live there. As soon as she ventured away from the dank streets---away from her partner---the old acquaintances bloomed from the woodwork.

Her physical and mental well-being were public knowledge and public discourse, apparently. It’d been touching at first that so many cared, but she got sick of it after the first two weeks. She’d always known that Damian had a rep---and not in a good way---but to experience what they felt about him firsthand was awful. And she got it---really, she did. In most break-ups, both parties wanted their friends to make them feel like the wronged one, the one who’d been mistreated. They expected her to be angry with him, and either badmouthed him openly, or threatened to go after him like it was open season on any and all Wayne bastards. Had it really been a break-up, she would have encouraged it. But their situation was a weird one, and she couldn’t make herself go into the details of why she wasn’t out for his blood for kicking her out---or even why she didn’t consider herself kicked out, or them even really _broken up._

The nuances were kept to herself, and her friends came to their own conclusions. Steph spent an exhausting two weeks fielding questions and forcing superpowered pals to _not_ ‘get even’ for her. Tim had wanted to freeze him out of the company (“Just until he gets his head out of his ass! It’s not like he’s done much for the company lately, anyway. You know that I’m right!”), Kara had wanted to punch him (“Just once! He won’t clear orbit! Pinkie swear!”), Milagro had wanted to strand him on the moon (“Just for a couple of hours, _hermana!_ I’ll give him oxygen! Lantern’s honor!”), and Iris had forwent getting her approval altogether. The speedster had zoomed to the Batcave and given Damian a piece of her mind, in such a pitch and speed that his ears had probably rang for days after. Milagro had gone after her and carted her away, but even when thrown over her girlfriend’s shoulder, Irey had flailed and continued her superspeed rant.

Babs had sent her flowers and a card. All it had said was _You made the right choice for yourself._

That was when Steph decided that she needed even more distance between herself and Gotham. When Beryl---Beryl Hutchinson, one-time Squire and current Knightess---had offered her a place to stay while she sorted herself out, she took her up on it. Tim booked her ticket and gave her access to an account that Damian could neither monitor nor control. She didn’t like being tied to Wayne money still, but beggers couldn’t be choosers, and it wasn’t like she could make it with a nine-to-five job. Her job experience lay in fast food and crimefighting, and neither paid well. She thanked Tim, deeply and honestly and awkwardly, because he put her up for almost a full month, no questions asked. He’d been good to her, good in that way she’d almost forgotten he could be. Tough times remind you of who your real friends are, and he’d popped in to stake his claim as _friend_ once again. She counted it as a silver lining of the whole experience.

The flight to England was a nightmare. She’d gone first class, but air travel had never jived well with her. Heap a little bit of homesickness (and so, so many complicated feelings attached to the fact that Wayne Manor had turned into her _home_ ) and a lot of stress, and you have one ironically queasy bat in flight. The first three hours of the seven hour flight saw more of her in the bathroom, puking her guts up, than in her seat. When air turbulence hit, she desperately wished the toilet had some kind of seat belt option in it, too.

Steph lurched to her seat and vowed to steal as many airsickness bags as necessary to survive the rest of her flight. When she’d left, her neighboring seat had been unoccupied, but a not-so-mysterious stranger had shown up from God only knew where.

Cassandra Cain had her ways. She knew how to make an entrance, even if said entrance bent the laws of believability. It didn’t surprise Steph as much as it should have that her old friend had found out when and where she was taking off from and had orchestrated her way aboard. With Cass, all things were possible. She’d turned into more of a shadow than a woman in recent years---personally, Steph likened her to a tiny Asian mix of James Bond, Bruce Lee, and Carmen Sandiego, liberally seasoned with Bat flavoring. She never knew when Cass would show up, but it always seemed to be when she needed her.

“Hi,” Cass said, and spared her a faint smile. With her, smiles lived more in the eyes than in the mouth, and hers were very bright.

“Hi,” Steph said, buckling herself back into her seat. She wrapped herself up with Cass as best she could while still staying in her seat, octopus limbs and a need for comfort she hadn’t been able to show anyone else.

Cassandra’s arms were always strong, always steady. She didn’t ask questions, and she didn’t make threats or demands. She just held her, and Steph finally let go and sobbed herself dry. The people in neighboring aisles gave them awkward looks, either embarrassed for the snot-nosed blond woman clinging to the seatmate or annoyed by the noise Steph was making. For once, she didn’t care. Every single person on that plane could blow her, for all she cared.

She did calm down eventually, and having a good hard cry had helped with the nausea, even if it had done horrific things to her mascara. With Cass’s arm around her, she managed to sleep for the next two hours---and she counted all of her lucky stars for that, because rare, sharp anxiety had kept her awake for most of the week. Babs had been right; she _was_ doing the right thing for herself, but it felt way too much like running away for her comfort. Running away was one of those _things_ with her---something that she’d promised herself she’d had her fill of and would never do again.

And yet, here she was: hopping the pond, because Metropolis wasn’t far enough away from Damian. At this rate, she’d end up back in Africa in another month.

She had to mercilessly crush that thought, because it brought the airsickness back full-force. Her stomach twisted and knotted, though she’d long since thrown up everything in it.

Cass saw the heaves coming---always, always saw a body’s actions before they played out---and handed her one of the baggies. Most people would have felt ashamed of throwing up like that, but this was her and Cass. Not so many years ago, they’d been Batgirl and Spoiler, girlfriends who’d trained and beat each other up until they hurled.

The good ol’ days.

Cass stroked her hair, her expression unreadable, and Steph dozed as well as her nausea allowed her to. When the landing warning came over the intercom, her features had rearranged from mild serenity to full blankness.

“You’ve been sick?” Cass asked, her dark eyes taking her in with incredible intensity. When Cassandra looked at someone, really _looked_ at them, she saw everything---all of the nonverbal cues that spoke to her more clearly than language ever had.

“Stress,” Steph said shortly, massaging her temples. The lingering nausea seemed to be paired with headaches, more often than not, and they seemed to be getting worse, not better. A vindictive little streak way down deep hoped that Damian was doing even an eighth as terribly as she was.

Cass didn’t even blink. Her sphinx-stare made her skin prickle weirdly.

“No,” she said, very quietly.

“No?” Steph echoed, eyebrows arched. “What do you mean, _no?”_

“No,” Cass said, her lips thinning into a frown. “Not sick.”

Steph’s face felt oddly hot. Well, of course she wasn’t _sick_ sick. She was a bundle of broken-up emotions, crunched-up promises, and stripped nerves. This, right here, was why she’d sworn off serious relationships. Steph didn’t know how to do anything halfway, so when she committed to someone she committed on a til’-death-do-we-part level even if rings and things weren’t involved. She was a master of caring _way_ too much, and what she’d had with Damian had been her first real, mature relationship. Nobody had gotten into her as deeply as he had, and to cut herself off from him for such a bizarre reason had made her react physically.

But the way that Cass said it made her feel strange, like there was some secret on her face that only she could read and interpret. She hadn’t gotten an x-ray vision upgrade, had she?

“Be well,” Cassandra said, and there was a strange _plead_ in her tone that Steph didn’t have any idea how to process. She kissed her forehead, then unbuckled her seatbelt the moment the pilot shut off the warning light.

And then she slid out of the seat and turned and left without another word.

“Aren’t we going to do girl things and have healing adventures?” Steph called after her, but Black Bat had already disappeared seamlessly into the milling bodies preparing to depart.

Steph didn’t know what the _hell_ had just happened, but she didn’t like it.

 

*

 

Damian was no stranger to loss. His was an odd dichotomy, because at face value he was a man who had it all---he had exceptional health, superior genetics, good looks, and more money than he could possibly spend. He did not want for much, and the only times his base needs hadn’t been met had been when one of his various teachers had been teaching him a lesson. He never went hungry, never had to settle for less than the very finest of things life had to offer, and always had a roof over his head. His peers---other twenty-year-old men---subsisted off of microwave dinners, minimum wage jobs, and the damning knowledge that they may never own a house of their own in the current economy. Damian had been given an _island_ for his eighth birthday.

And yet, he had never been able to hold onto anything but the physical, the things granted to him by his birthright. The things he loved died. The people he loved left. He was the epitome of the man who had it all and had nothing, all at once. So, after his mother had abandoned him, and Pennyworth had passed away, and his father had been murdered, and his brother had died, he’d thought that he had reached his threshold for feeling loss. Nothing else could hurt him the way that each successive loss had; after Dick, he could not hurt more.

He’d been so wrong. So, so wrong.

Stephanie had left him. This was different from the other losses, a new type of loss. He had been the one to leave Mother, and Father and Pennyworth had not chosen to die. Dick had left, yes, but he’d had every intention of returning. Furthermore, they were family. Stephanie was family, but she was the family that he’d _made_. She was the one that he loved, and she had no intention of coming back. The other losses had been involuntary; her leaving him had been deliberate.

She’d wanted to go, so he’d let her.

Damian hadn’t known that sexual-emotional-romantic- _necessary_ love would ache when it fractured. If he had, he might have safeguarded himself from it and refused to indulge. He wasn’t sure if the good had been good enough to justify how bad it felt now, in the wake of it all falling apart. He struggled with the pros and cons, with making rational sense of the mess inside him. The left-brained analyst in him didn’t know what to do or how to react, so he gave up.

The first week, he left his bed only twice---both times, to replenish Alfred’s cat food. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, and his thoughts chased each other in mad, desperate circles. Damian couldn’t think of himself as a creature capable of depression and mourning, so he didn’t put words to his lack of action. Being who and what he was, he didn’t need to eat or sleep to keep alive. Even if he kept bed-bound perpetually, he wouldn’t die.

He didn’t want to die---no, he was a pragmatist, not a man prone to theatrical dramatics. He was the Batman, and he would continue to be the Batman until old age took him. Nothing changed that, not even the loss of his partner. His ‘vacation’ into self-pity lasted only that first week---a mute, horrible week where he wondered what could have been had he not bartered away that scrap of metaphysical fluff that meant so _much_ to her. Logic said that _they_ never would have been, because one or the other would have died long before they became a couple.

Still, he wondered. He wondered, and he wished, because praying for a different ending to this story was beyond his realm of belief.

One day, almost two weeks after the night Stephanie left, Alfred brought in a tribute. He’d killed another bat, and he laid it deliberately on Steph’s pillow. It bled through the pillowcase, making a mess, but Damian didn’t have the energy to scold the cat. He’d brought her a gift, a present, a _this is for you when you return; I’ve left it where you’ll find it_ , and it made everything in him turn to lead.

“She’s not coming back,” Damian told the perplexed cat, his voice rough from disuse.

Saying it aloud had made it fact, so he’d adjusted himself to accept this hard truth. Damian ate, showered, shaved, and returned to patrolling that night.

He let the work consume him. It was easier to push himself into the things necessary of the Bat when his life and his individuality had been pared out of the equation. He understood his father better, and he hated that it took the loss of his best and brightest possession to bring him closer to the memory of Bruce Wayne. To become a better Batman, he had to be nothing but the Bat.

And without her, he was. Without her, he could patrol all night, brutally effective and covering more ground than ten normal men could. Without her, he was a better Bat.

Without her, it felt like meaningless rote and mechanical repetition.

Stephanie was staying with Drake. It didn’t surprise him that she’d called him first, or that Drake had welcomed her with open arms. It was good that she was there, because he had no desire to go to Metropolis to confront her. If he did, he would be arguing with Drake and all of his spit-shine _good_ friends, and it would make a scene. Even if he went to talk to her civilly, he wouldn’t be allowed to do so. They thought him a monster, so they’d force him to play the part.

He wondered if they thought he’d been keeping her in Gotham against her will, the Beauty to his Beast. He wondered if that meant he would be dealing with the superhero equivalent of pitchforks and torches someday. He knew that it wouldn’t break _his_ curse. His secondhand contact with Stephanie was limited---he only called Drake once, to confirm that she was okay, and the only one who’d come to confront him for his misdeeds was Impulse. Iris had been vibrating and screeching on a level beyond human understanding, but he’d picked up on enough: _she’samessandit’syourfaultyoubastardhowcouldyoushelovesyouSO.MUCH_.

It’d made him angry. Not at her, but at the kernels of truth there.

Yes, this was his fault. No, he could not make it right. Yes, she deserved better. She always had.

Damian had allowed her to scream at him, because arguing with her would do no good. But when Milagro had come to collect her speedster girlfriend, he hadn’t been able to help letting some of that black, bitter spite seep out---he’d called them both a name that’d earned him a punch from a giant green fist. They’d left, and he’d played his part as monster. The story would spread, and no one else would come to talk to him. They’d concentrate their energies on convincing Stephanie to stay away, because he was a bad man who said bad things.

And that was what he wanted.

But he did get one more visitor, weeks later. The members of his ‘family’ had visual-recognition access to the Batcave proper, but even if she hadn’t had a standing invitation, Cassandra would have slipped in without his notice. She was masterful, one of the few that had had his respect since he’d been a child. He’d mooned over the idea of her, slick and experienced and wonderful, even though he’d ended up with a different Batgirl.

Cassandra didn’t say anything in greeting. She was in civilian clothes, a simple black skirt and indigo blouse, and she was unarmed. He’d assumed that she’d come to talk---though neither were masters of _that_ field---but then she’d been suddenly _there_ , inside his guard. He had hardly seen her move; in one swift, painful crack, she punched him in the face hard enough to shatter bone. Damian’s nose chugged blood, and his brain wrestled with pain and shock.

And then, Cassandra turned and left without a word.

“What the _fuck_ did you do that for?” Damian yelped, holding his bleeding nose. It was definitely broken.

Damian didn’t know what the _hell_ had just happened, but he didn’t like it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But you, you marvelous mad Yanks, you’re still writing your stories. Your King Arthurs and Lady Guineveres are still alive, and the world reacts to them. The Batman and his knights will live forever.

The years had been good to Beryl Hutchinson---or at least as good as the years ever were to a long-term costumed vigilante. When Steph had first met her, they had been Batgirl and Squire, a former-Robin and Europe’s basic equivalent to Robin. She’d known very little about the girl, the meeting having been all-business and in the name of the Bat (and also Justice), but the British spitfire had clicked with her in a way that was rare for them both. They’d kept in contact after their _hey, look, the space-time continuum has gone all timey-wimey_ adventure, mostly through brief emails and a few instances of their paths intersecting at the right place at the right time. They were cut from similar cloth, girls who’d grown up with little and gone through too much, but who’d ultimately found their calling doling out criminal punishment in thematic costumes. Beryl wore magic armor nowadays, the first Knightress in the line, but she was still her loud, explosively cheery self.

Steph wasn’t sure who had told her about The Fight---because she refused to believe that the relationship issues between Batman and Batwoman were interesting enough to hop over the pond all on their own---but she felt oddly obligated to send them a thank you note. Beryl was what she needed, she decided as soon as the redheaded woman caught sight of her among the other passengers wandering around like lost children. The Knightress gave a loud whoop of excitement and waved at her enthusiastically, like the sign blaring CONSTANCE ABERTHINE in bright purple marker wasn’t enough of a clue that she was there to pick her up.

Beryl was bright and obnoxious and commanding. She was everything that the normal Gothamite was not, and Steph _needed_ that. She tossed the sign aside and loped up to her, wrapping her in a hug that squeezed just shy of collapsing her lungs.

“Hullo, Steph! It’s so good to see you!” Beryl crowed happily, pulling her up off her feet and swinging with her. It took sheer force of will to beat back her lingering airsickness. She had to swallow repeatedly to keep from hurling on her sneakers. That would have seriously affected Beryl’s level of enthusiasm, and Steph wanted to ride the curve of her good cheer and pretend that this was a pleasure visit, and that everything was fine.

“You look great, B,” Steph said, and meant it. Beryl had grown into herself, a powerful cut of a woman. Even without her armor on, her bearing screamed _warrior_ \---or _you don’t want to meet me in a dark alley, mate_ , at least. She was tall and toned, her tanned arms chased with faint, pale trails of scar tissue. She’d kept her very red hair in a chin-length bob, but her left eyebrow and nose had been pierced since the last time she’d seen her.

“And you look like a smear in a gutter, ducks,” she said, grinning. “But not every day can be a winning one, now can it? Take it from me---a week or two here will make life in the States seem simple. You’ll be too busy to dwell on any pointy-eared bastards.”

Yeah, this was exactly what Steph needed.

*

Beryl lived in a mess of an apartment that was more closet than apartment, and more warzone than mess. If Beryl herself was an entire army of loud woman warriors distilled into one body, her apartment was the home decor equivalent. Newspaper clippings and a few pieces of drying lingerie hung from a line that stretched from the kitchenette to the living room---a grand total of about eight feet. Her bookshelf was made of stacked milk crates and cinder blocks, and her computer looked like it might actually be duct taped. Everything was everywhere and nothing made sense, but it still felt welcoming and homey.

Steph didn’t know where to set her things---or where to sit, really, since the couch was covered in archaic weapons, a layer of cat hair, and the fat, dim cat that the hair belonged to. Beryl shooed the cat (Knickers, which was both a wonderful and terrible name for an overweight cat that had the IQ and disposition of an attractive paperweight) off the couch, moved the mace, and commanded her to drop her bag and make herself at home.

And it was a little bit like being at home. Not Wayne-home, but Mom-home. The house that she and her mother had shared had been a lot like this one, albeit a little bit more organized. Things were well-worn and well-loved, either hand-me-downs to begin with or items used until they fell apart, then taped together and used some more.

“It’s not much,” Beryl said, almost hesitantly. “But I don’t need much, y’know? It’s my own place, and that’s what’s important to me.”

It was like she was looking at her home with fresh eyes and picking out all the imagined faults; Steph waved her off immediately.

“I totally do,” she said, and gave her the brightest smile she could muster. “Having it be _yours_ means a lot. And it’s a for-real flat. That’s cool. Consider the American very impressed.”

“A flat that’s home to the one and only Knightress,” she agreed, her hesitance warming into pride. “And the temporary headquarters of America’s darling, the Batwoman. That’s a winning two-fer if I ever did see one. I’d take you to the castle, but it’s drafty. Marvelous to tour and to take tea in, but give me an apartment with a heater any old day. He’d like to see you.” Beryl paused, then bubbled with laughter. “The, um, _Earl_ of the castle, not the castle, that is.”

Steph forgot that Beryl’s former partner wasn’t just an average joe, sometimes. The American Batman was a trust fund orphan in every incarnation, but Britain’s Bat was of noble lineage. He had a castle and everything. It struck her as kind of odd that Beryl lived in a crappy studio apartment while her old friend and mentor had an entire castle for him and his (Texan!) butler, but she was no stranger to complicated situations.

“It’d be an honor. Do I have to curtsy? If I make a bad first impression, do I get exiled from Wordenshire? Inquiring minds, ‘cause I’m _really good_ at bad first impressions.”

“Ha! No, no. Cyril’s a lamb. It’s the first Thursday of the month, and I’m expected at the Time in a Bottle in London,” Beryl explained, picking up pieces of very old armor. Knickers, who had resettled himself in the bowl of her helmet, gave a grumble of protest when she shooed him out of it. “Cyril wants you to come along. The local chapters of our crowd---the capes and cowls, that is---they gather at the Time in a Bottle to share a pint and a bit of camaraderie. It’s a tradition stretching back to the sixteenth century, so I thought you might be interested.”

“I’m here for the culture,” Steph said, putting on her best face. “Culturize me, cap’n.”

 

*

 

The Time in a Bottle was the single most British thing that Steph had ever experienced, and that was including the back-alley tours Beryl had inflicted on her at high speed the first time she’d visited. At face value, the pub was quaint---more of a converted inn than anything, feeling faintly like it’d been someone’s home many, many years before. The Time in a Bottle was a place that could not possibly have existed in Gotham, for more reasons than she could list.

First off, everyone was in costume. If she hadn’t known better, she would have assumed that the pub was holding an early Halloween costume contest. First Thursday of the month was just for _their_ crowd, and what a crowd it was. There were a ton of uniforms that she recognized, but they were tipped slightly---the European versions of heroes that’d originated on American soil. She’d done a neck-wrenching double-take when she’d passed a framed picture on the wall that looked scarily like the Joker, if he’d put on fifty pounds and fifty years. The plaque underneath the picture read, “Jarvis Poker: the Funniest Among Us,” paired with his day of birth and his death.

That was the second thing that’d floored Steph: costumed heroes and known villains mingled freely and without conflict. She tried to imagine what this would look like in Gotham---Batman and Joker enjoying frosty brews and shooting the shit, toasting their hero/villain bond with PBRs and civil discussion of politics.

It wouldn’t happen. It just wouldn’t happen, even if a bar blessed by Merlin existed in America. The pub had a tiny statue that prevented any use of powers, weapons, or aggressive force. But, Steph felt, if all the criminals and vigilantes of Gotham were piled into a pub that forbade physical fighting with truce magic, one of two things would happen. Either they would try to find a way around it, using the place as a trap, or they wouldn’t go there at all. They had no interest in meeting in gray zones, no desire to see each other as anything but enemies or obstacles.

So, it was surreal. Completely and utterly surreal. When Beryl had told her to suit up to go meet Cyril, she hadn’t expected anyone else to know who she was. But as soon as Batwoman and the Knightress had walked in the door, people flocked. Everyone wanted to shake her hand, to tell her what a dear she was, to ask how long she’d be staying and if she’d be interested in seeing the particular sights they watched over. It was a little bit overwhelming, and Beryl---thankfully---picked up on that. She shooed away the colorful bunch of spandex-clad admirers, telling them that they were chatty nags, and to give her some breathing room. Using her size to cut a path through the throng, she steered her toward a back corner table.

“Sorry about that,” Beryl said, her smile broad beneath her armored visor. “I let slip to the regulars that I’d be entertaining a Bat, and you’ve got a bit of a following here.”

“Holy crap,” Steph said with feeling, rearranging her cape as she took a seat. NOMEX wasn’t comfortable to sit on when it was all bunched up. “Pretty sure they like me more here than in my own town. I don’t think I could be more welcomed.”

“Wouldn’t a pint or two make you feel properly welcomed?” Cyril asked, sliding into the booth next to Beryl. He looked weirdly out of place in a light wool blazer and slacks, but he didn’t have a masked identity anymore.

“Particularly if it’s a pint bought by Lord Cyril Sheldrake, Earl of Wordenshire, eh?”

“As awesome as a drink purchased by nobility would be, I’m gonna pass,” Steph said. Her stomach turned over unpleasantly at the mere thought.

“Not on my account, I hope,” said Cyril, folding his big hands together neatly on the table. “It wouldn’t bother me. I’ve been sober for fifteen years, now.”

Steph suffered a hot, brief flash of embarrassment. She hadn’t known that Cyril was a recovering alcoholic. It wasn’t the type of thing that came up easily in conversation, and even as friendly as she’d been with Beryl, they hadn’t delved into the nitty-gritty details of their personal lives. Capes and cowls were notoriously close-mouthed about their secret identities, even to allies. Keeping some things safe was what kept some of them alive to fight another day. It was just a reality of their dual lives.

“Oh, no, no,” Steph said, waving her hands. “I don’t think my stomach could handle any booze right now. I spent half the flight over tossing my cookies.” She paused for a beat. “Biscuits. Is that even a saying here? _Anyway,_ I was puking my guts out, ‘cause I’m apparently the only Bat that can’t fly.”

Beryl reached across the table and patted her hand.

“You should’ve said something. They serve a nice ginger ale here. How’s about I get us a round? I haven’t got much of a taste for alcohol, anyhow.” Beryl jerked a thumb at Cyril with a cheeky grin. “Been hanging around this bloody pain in the A for too many years.”

“And you only complain when we’ve got company,” he groused, though the corners of his eyes crinkled with mirth. “Go fetch the drinks, you. Tell George to put it on my tab.”

“Right, right,” Beryl said, an eye-roll in her voice. “I live to serve, m’lord.”

“No earl could hope for a better knight,” he said warmly. Beryl disappeared into the rainbow of costumes, the pointed metal ears of her helmet bobbing above the crowd.

“She’s a hell of a knight, too,” Steph said, eying Cyril thoughtfully. He was just edging toward his mid-forties, his age only belied by the creases in his kind, calm face, and the fingers of gray working away from his temples. He was in fine physical condition, still able to hold his own in any fight, if he chose to. He didn’t, though. He’d passed on his mantle, his armor, by choice.

“She wears it well,” he agreed, smiling absently. It brought out dimples that cut a good ten years off him. “She, erm. Was ready for it years ago, I suppose, but I wanted to be certain before I passed the torch. She couldn’t stay my Squire forever, and she’s always had the heart for it. Hutchinsons are known to have lion hearts, and my knight’s the bravest of the breed.”

“Soon as I get my ginger ale, I’m toasting to that,” she said, her eyes still wandering around the pub. Soaking it all in was a process. It might as well have been full of lions and lambs grooming each other, for the way the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ carried on. “Do you miss it? The punching and the kicking and the crimefighting, I mean.”

Cyril contemplated that for a long minute, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles.

“Yes and no,” he said. “It’s a curious affliction, this need to take to the streets. I was the Squire before her, so I’ve been in this business for most of my life. I was the Squire ‘cos my father needed me, then the Knight because I needed _it_. It filled an emptiness, taking up his armor after he died. She,” and those calm, deep brown eyes of his rested on Beryl, who was chatting merrily with the bartender. “Became my Squire ‘cos I needed her. Drink nearly ruined me---the fight wasn’t enough to keep the emptiness at bay. I lost the castle, lost my head---damn near lost it all. The Hutchinsons took me in, cleaned me up, and set me back on my feet. Bringing order to the streets helped sort me out on the inside, so I needed to be the Knight.”

Cyril didn’t look away from her.

“Now, I don’t need that. She does. She fights for me, and she does it admirably. I miss it, and I worry that she gets in over her head at times, but I don’t regret making her my Knight. Seemed like the natural progression of things, really.”

Steph hummed thoughtfully, chin in her hand.

“The Bats could learn a thing or two from you,” she murmured, then sighed. “They all hold onto their titles with white knuckles until they _have_ to give ‘em up, or they pretend that they’re going to live forever.”

Or the made sure that they _would_ live forever. But that wasn’t a thought that Steph could share. She stamped it down before it could ruin her mood.

“Yes, well,” Cyril twirled one wrist airily, evasive. “Things are, erm. Different in the colonies, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”

“You don’t even know,” Stephanie said with a laugh. “Seriously. Nooooo idea.”

“And I’m back with drinks and merriment,” Beryl said, expertly juggling three mugs. She slid back into the booth, passing out drinks. “What’d I miss? Been talking about me? I’ll be disappointed if you weren’t, y’know.”

“We’ve been brainstorming stories and slander to circulate,” she smirked over the top of her mug. It was the gingeriest ginger ale that she’d ever had, but the bite was unexpectedly nice. “Gotta keep the rumor mill going.”

“You damned Yank,” she laughed. “And I opened my heart and home to you, too.”

“And I’m grateful for that,” Steph said, with all the feeling she could muster. Offering to put her up for as long as she needed was no small thing, but Beryl wasn’t halfway about anything. She didn’t put limits on anything, so she knew if she ended up crashing on her couch for ten years, she’d be perfectly happy with the arrangement. Beryl and Cyril were _good_ people. “Still working through my culturization shock, but I’m glad I’m here.”

“It’s, ah, odd for you, I imagine,” Cyril said, big hands wrapped around his stein. “The speed here’s a bit different, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of crazy,” she agreed, that framed picture of the not-Joker catching her eye again. “There’s a lot of similarities, but the heroes and the villains are more...”

“Moderate?” Beryl prompted, following her gaze. The portrait brought out faint creases of displeasure at the corners of her mouth. “The crowd runs more on the golden mean here. That’s not to say our villains aren’t bad people, but they ain’t monsters. I’ve never figured out if Gotham makes ‘em that way, or if it’s simply something in the water. We had a Joker, y’know---Jarvis Poker, British Joker.”

“A good man,” Cyril murmured, then drank to it.

“You wouldn’t call our Joker a good man,” Steph said, the name alone calling up fractured bits of what the Joker _was_ : blood and shrieking laughter, crowbars and dead kittens drowned in marzipan, children laughing themselves to death. “I mean, most people wouldn’t even call him a man. He’s a thing. A bad, awful, _why can’t you just stay down and-or in jail_ thing.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, nodding briefly. “But Brits don’t have the same sense of humor. See, our Joker ripped his style ‘cos he thought it was inspiring, but his jokes were actually funny. He was a hero in his own right, though he didn’t want that spread around.”

“Is that...I dunno, common around here?” Steph asked, surveying the crowd with new interest.

“Fairly. We’ve had heroes of our own, but you Yanks have done it with a certain flair. Lotsa people have taken up similar names, inspired by what they’ve seen from afar. I knew a Shrike once, too. Heard that yours is a foul man, but ours was.” Beryl stopped, taking a quick drink---like she had to wash a bad taste out of her mouth. “He was a good boy, too. The only thing that made him a recovering villain was the fact that he signed up for a villainy weblisting ‘cos he didn’t know where else to start in the business. Joker killed him. Yours, not ours. He killed ours, too.”

Steph seriously regarded the bubbles in her soda, willing her stomach to calm down again. Sometimes, she wondered exactly how many lives the Arkham lot had torn apart with graceless fingers---how much they’d ruined, if that was something that could even be tallied up. The next line of thought was the one where she---and all the other people in her ‘clan’---had to stop: would this particular life be different, or better, if we’d taken the Joker out of the picture decades ago?

It was the question that split Jason from Bruce. It defined their methodology. Though she followed Bruce’s laws still, it wasn’t a question that Steph had ever fully answered for herself. When she brought herself up short, it wasn’t always her own instincts she was following.

“Why?” she heard herself ask. “Why would people here want to be _anything_ like what we have in Gotham?”

Beryl and Cyril exchanged a look between them; it was a glance that held an entire conversation and ended in Cyril nodding slightly.

“At first glance, you’d think it’s ‘cos you Americans beat us to the naming game,” Cyril said, his tone the slow, even cadence of a storyteller. “And I’d wondered that myself, when I was a much younger man. My father, Lord Percival Sheldrake, was the first Squire---but to the Shining Knight, who is a different hero altogether. The Shining Knight title goes back to the days of Arthur, so you could say he’s uniquely ours. When my father grew into himself and struck out on his own, he decided against following tradition. This pointy-eared gentleman across the pond inspired him, so he married his love of England’s history with everything that the Batman stood for: championing the weak, upholding law and order, never using guns, and never killing. He’s not the only one, either---years before Mr. Wayne fully funded Batman Incorporated, Batmen were popping up globally. What his actions said carried further than his voice ever could. That is how the Knight, the British Batman, was born.”

“But it’s more than that,” Beryl cut in when Cyril paused for thought. “He---the Batman, that is---is bigger than just what he did, or how he did it. He’s a hero.”

“We’re all heroes,” Steph said, not quite understanding where the Knightress was going with that.

“Erm, yes, in a _broad sense_ , but,” Cyril gestured around them, at the Time in a Bottle as a whole. “We’ve got an interesting view of things, here. America is a young country, in the grand scheme of things. Britain is an archaeological site of sorts: the various peoples and conquerors have left layer after layer atop each other, which informs both our culture and our imaginations. If you start digging, you’ll find modern England and the whole chain of kings and queens that led us here, then the Norman conquest, then the Anglo-Saxons, then the Roman empire’s fingertips, then the prehistoric peoples, then all the immortal things that were here before mankind was even thought of. It’s a lumpy layer cake, and sometimes things from the bottom poke up through. Nothing is ever fully erased, so we have this very rich, very old history to pull our stories from. There’s no finer example of it than _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , I think. Fairies and Romanized Greeks played and penned by Brits. America doesn’t have this, not to such a degree.”

“You’re too young for it, and your native stories aren’t held up with the same veneration,” Beryl added. “Those old so-called magics exist, but they’re not as strong in the consciousness. So, being _Americans_ , you’ve gone and made your own heroes.”

“There’s a difference between heroes like, erm,” Cyril looked around for a victim. “Rush Hours one through three, and King Arthur. You’ve probably never heard of the Rush Hours, but everyone can name at least three or four knights of the Round Table. Our true heroes are hundreds of years old, because our memory for history goes back far further than even that. But you, you marvelous mad Yanks, you’re still writing your stories. Your King Arthurs and Lady Guineveres are still alive, and the world reacts to them. The Batman and his knights will live forever.” He drank his ginger ale, smiling. “You can mark my words on that one. Children will be telling your tales for many, many years.”

Stephanie had never thought about it in those terms. Why would she have? The cape and the cowl had always had meaning, the Bat Symbol inciting a visceral reaction in the people of Gotham, but her view of what it all meant was super-nearsighted. Being a Bat had felt like being a part of something big, but this was huge and humbling---and it felt _right._ When Bruce had started putting together the Batman Inc network, he hadn’t had to _make_ heroes in his own image. They’d been there already, peppered around the globe and fighting for what made Batman _Batman_ without ever having been in his presence. In a weird way, the candle vow could have been considered some kind of knighting, too.

She must have been staring blankly as her brain tried to process this---and all the meaning attached to it---because Cyril chuckled warmly.

“Bit of an eye-opener, eh?”

“Yeah, it. I. The fanboy welcome makes more sense now,” she said.

“What you do is magnificent,” Beryl said, reaching over and squeezing both her hands. “And that’s why you’ll always be welcome in my home, Batwoman. Even if you’re a bloody gossip.”

Later that night, curled up on the squeaky pull-out spare bed in Beryl’s apartment, Steph kept herself awake trying to commit everything that had been said to memory. She wished that Damian had been able to hear it from the Knight and Knightress themselves. Since he was thousands of miles and several bad decisions removed, she made herself remember it all.

As the Batman, he _was_ that hero. If he gave her the chance, she’d convince him of it.

 

*

 

Patrolling with the Knightress reminded her of the goodl ol’ days. Not the good ol’ days with Damian---the _old_ good ol’ days, when she’d worn a hand-sewn purple cape and done everything at her own speed. In those ol’ days, she’d been as self-made as her costume, scooting around on an ancient Kawasaki she’d conned a former boyfriend into fixing up for her. She hadn’t had real patterns or routines, just zooming around the dark streets armed only with enthusiasm and the idea that she was doing The Right Thing, beating down everything that got in her way.

With Beryl, it was like that. There was a freedom to it, because they were constantly roaming to new places. Damian had been a stickler about following crime patterns and planning ahead, but the Knightress was more reactionary. Nothing much happened in Wordenshire, so she went wherever she was needed. She rode Knight’s old motorcycle, the horse-headed Anastasia, and Steph followed on the Squire’s retired “steed”.

The Knightress was the Bat of England, which meant she covered a lot more ground than Batwoman, the Bat of Gotham, was used to. The change was good, though; good for her head, good for her heart, and ostensibly good for her health.

Worden was a tiny town, full of family-owned shops that’d stood for hundreds of years. The air was clean and fresh, and she couldn’t have found a friendlier bunch of civilians. Everyone was on first name basis with everyone else, and the identities of the line of Knights of Wordenshire was the single worst-kept secret in all of England. The grapevine was a surprisingly good source of information, and nobody ever had to be shaken down for what they knew. News was floated to Beryl through the sweet old man who owned the convenience store where Beryl picked up Cyril’s favorite magazines---he actively kept ‘those masked hooligans’ out of Worden by yelling them out of his shop and giving them directions to London, where they’d have an easier time rabble-rousing---and from the milkman every morning---who was an honest to God milkman who delivered honest to God milk, but who was also a vigilante (named The Milkman)---and from the sharp-eared woman who ran the bakery---who would always tell Beryl to pass the info along to that dashing Knightress friend of hers, then give her a wink.

The people of Worden were very aware of who watched over them, and they were proud of her. Beryl and Cyril’s secret identities were as unsecretive as secret identities got, but there was this implied _trust_ , this _respect_ , that kept them safe from the world outside of their rural village. Steph figured that most of the people who saw her with Beryl as her stay went from ‘days’ to ‘weeks’ had puzzled out who Batwoman was by proxy. It should have bothered her---and if Damian had known, he would’ve had eighteen kinds of fits---but it seemed like such a non-issue in Worden. The locals treated her like she’d been one of theirs since childhood, more of a part of the community than a visitor whose stay was looking more and more permanent daily.

All of that open air and kindness should have been therapeutic. And mentally, it was. Steph had space to think, to analyze her life in Gotham without the claustrophobic skyscrapers boxing her in. But she couldn’t shake her problems, and the weight of what she’d left behind in Gotham wore her down. In the two months since she’d packed up and pushed off, she’d lost almost ten pounds. The Stress About What Damian Might Be Doing to Himself Diet was a killer, and all she had to do to slim down was hug the toilet until she wondered what she’d done to piss off God, anyway.

This didn’t go unnoticed by Beryl---or any of the graying women who frequented the bakery or the deli where they ate most of their meals. It’d been a mixed blessing to learn that Beryl was as terrible at cooking as Steph was, because while solidarity was great, they had to eat. The bakery and deli were warm and friendly enough that the staff might as well have been family, so whenever Steph had to hurriedly excuse herself and make a beeline for the loo, she returned to worried clucking and an array of home remedies to ease stress.

She tried to push it all from her mind---to cut herself off. She tried, because she knew that for her sake---as well as Damian’s---she _had_ to. Trying didn’t earn her gold stars in the real world, though, and she couldn’t control her wandering thoughts. Little things reminded her of him, but those prompts weren’t anywhere as bad as the dreams.

More often than not, she dreamt of him. That scared her, more than she wanted to admit even to herself. Ever since her teens, her nightmares had been predictable: sharp edges and needles, Black Mask and the tremor in Bruce’s voice when he’d promised that she’d really been _something._ Now, her dreams were fresh and full of dark avenues she’d never explored before. There was a new tableau of horror waiting for her at every dead end.

Sometimes, they’d be good dreams. She’d dream about his hands, how his palm felt when it curved to follow the arch of her hip. The exact shapes of the calluses on his fingertips, the edge of his nails when they bit skin. His wide knuckles, and the multicolored pattern their fingers made when laced together. She’d dream about his eyes, how they warmed and cooled like liquid with his moods. Always blue, always clear, but they could be warm depths or ice. She dreamt about him in pieces, fragments and details she’d memorized over the years.

In the good dreams, she never saw all of him, and sometimes his presence was nothing but that familiar hand on her hip and his warm breath on the back of her neck as he slept---implications of the rest of him. When she woke up in the lumpy hide-a-bed in Beryl’s flat, alone and three thousand miles away from all the places she’d called home, she usually curled up on her side and tried not to cry. Even if she succeeded, suppressing it made her sick.

Most of the time, they were nightmares shot through with memories. She’d dream about all the ways she’d seen him die: shot in the head, shot in the heart, strangled, snapped, and burned. She’d dream about all the wrong, broken angles his body had taken. The exact shapes of the puddles of blood around him when he bled out, how the chugging flow from the bullet wounds would slow and stop with his heartbeat.

The nightmares were never content with working with real life material, the things she’d seen and could never forget, so sometimes it was Black Mask holding the knife, palming the gun, or holding his body. Sometimes, it was her. And nightmares being nightmares, he never opened his eyes again, never healed and got back up with a sneer.

Steph woke up shaking every time, and it was a race to get untangled from her bedding and make it to the sink or toilet before she started heaving. That nausea was a lasting one, because she saw ghastly afterimages whenever she closed her eyes. She knew that she couldn’t keep losing sleep and weight at the rate that she was, but what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t change things. Her hands were tied, and the only person she could beat up over it was her own body.

Beryl noticed--- _had_ to have noticed; throwing up had become as much a part of Steph’s morning routine as brushing her teeth---but she said nothing. She was brash and bold, but even she knew better than to stomp through certain delicate situations. So, she tried to distract her with patrolling at night and a whole host of activities during the day. Beryl was a great hostess and a better friend, so Steph felt guilty for letting her internal turmoil leak out at all. The more she repressed and stuffed it all down, the sicker she got.

By the sixth week of her extended stay, Beryl was kicking out all the stops when it came to constructive distractions. Nobody knew they lay of the land like the Knightress did, and nobody had as many friends in unexpected places. One warm, damp night in mid-July, she announced that they would be taking the night off and painting the town red in a different way. Beryl locked her in the bathroom and promised that she’d keep her alive with crackers poked under the door until she agreed to hang up the cape for the night and go out to meet people. Steph hadn’t had any choice but to sigh and say yes.

She wondered when she’d become the un-fun one. Not too long ago, she was Steph Brown: _International Woman of Fun-Having._ She would’ve punched a whole line of criminals in the face for the chance to go to a punk rock show. It wasn’t age that’d calmed her down, it was exhaustion and inescapable misery. She’d get over it---everyone from the sweet Worden housewives to Beryl to Kara to Cass and back again had promised that---but Steph was stubborn, even when she didn’t want to be. She hadn’t let go of Damian. Not yet.

But soaking up some reality wouldn’t hurt in the meantime, so she threw on jeans and a t-shirt---she’d pondered long and hard over whether it would be more appropriate to wear her best shirt, or her rattiest---and braced herself for Beryl’s most dogged attempt at making her enjoy herself.

And it worked. Kind of.

Beryl’s favorite club was a hole in the wall that didn’t warrant a sign, much less a blurb on travel websites. It was one of those places where you had to know someone who knew someone to know it existed, and then you had to know someone who _really_ knew someone in order to get in. It was dirty, lit by neon and a motley assortment of lights that illuminated the curlicues of cigarette smoke snaking toward the ceiling. The floor was packed and rowdy enough that only the strung out, the smashed, the die-hard, the jaded, and the foolhardy would willingly risk going out into it, and at the moment Steph wasn’t any of the above. She couldn’t hear her own thoughts around the shrill, breakneck speed of the guitar riffs and the thumping of the the bass, but that was what she wanted. No booze, nothing to make her emotional and maudlin---just something loud enough to jar her out of the sick loop she’d fallen into.

 _“Love adventure death and glory; The short goodbye the whispered story,”_ the frontman yowling on stage had his thin shoulders bunched up near his ears, his entire body wrapped protectively around the microphone. He sang-screamed in rapid-fire. _“One last glance at the chameleon dance, and into the dark across the park. I ain't no mark for the venus of the hardsell! SAY IT!"_ He pulled the mic away, shouting so hard that the muscles in his long neck stood out in hard lines and spittle sprayed out of his mouth. The crowd knew the song---loved the song, by the way they were writhing in the choppy spaces between each word---so they shrieked with him, _"I AIN'T NO MARK FOR THE VENUS OF THE HARDSELL!"_

“An oldie but goodie,” Beryl shouted in her ear. She had to fight to be heard over the music, even with a hand on her shoulder and leaning in close. “Mucous Membrane! They were just brilliant, back in the day!”

 _“Saints and sinners raw beginners; Lipstick traces and TV dinners!”_

“Punk rock songs have lyrics?” Steph shouted back, her grin wide. Beryl laughed hard, slapping her shoulder.

 _“Empty graves and shallow heads; Shallow smiles and empty beds!”_

“Don’t let anyone hear you say that!” She said, the whirling lights making her smile almost garish. “This lot’ll be out for your blood!”

 _“Betta get a room without a view; Sail out of sight of land!”_

Steph had listened to her fair share of punk rock---she was kind of a punk at heart, in her own way. When she’d been thirteen and at her angriest, she’d thrived on the slamming regurgitation of lyrics and chords. It had been less about the lyrics and more about the _feel_ \---venting, the toxic release of everything kept pent up by God, propriety, and The Man. Her thirteen-year-old self’s version of The Man had had hands large enough to swallow her up and choke out all of her _no_ s, his voice a deceptively gentle murmur that’d been an alibi: _nothing’s wrong, we’re fine, we were just talking about your gymnastics, weren’t we? You were just showing me your walk-overs. I was only helping. Nothing’s wrong._

Punk rock had given her an outlet to scream it all out under the guise of appreciating music. To her, that was what punk rock music _was._

 _“Momma won't like it but you should---Travel with a rough-neck crew!”_

She was actively listening for the lyrics this time, though. They were surprisingly good. Steph squinted out across the mosh pit, eyes and ears sharp. The singer stomped and swung his long, skinny limbs, and the crowd followed, fists punching the air in violent ecstasy.

 _“Listen out for all that's said!”_

That’s when she saw him. She recognized him immediately---would have known him anywhere, even if she’d only caught a brief glimpse of him.

Damian didn’t blend well when he wasn’t wearing the suit that made him the Batman, or the suit that made him the son of billionaire Bruce Wayne. There was something about him that stood out, that was so singular that it denied him any place where he completely fit in. She’d always thought that maybe that was due to Gotham being Gotham, but it turned out to be more of Damian just being Damian.

He was wearing loose black slacks and a green shirt, hands in his pockets. Unsurprisingly, he was looking at her.

He’d followed her all the way to England. She wasn’t sure if that was something that made her happy or not, but the relief of just _seeing_ him again swelled up before she could crush it.

 _“Just worry when the hounds ain't fed! Gotta worry when the hounds ain't fed!”_

“Have to pee,” Steph quickly told Beryl, launching herself into the mess of bodies on the floor before she could offer to go with her. As she worked her way toward him---leading with her elbows, because she figured that regulars at punk rock shows expected to come home with bruises or worse---she tried to decide if she wanted to punch him for _stalking_ her when she’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want to be around him, or if she wanted to grab onto him and not let go for at least five minutes.

She hadn’t come to a decision by the time she resurfaced where she’d seen him, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t there. She’d imagined it. She’d missed him so much, she’d imagined he’d go all the way to England just to see her.

Steph was just gearing up for some real self-disgust when a hand closed around her wrist. And she knew that hand, knew whose it was without even having to turn around.

Damian smirked. She was too busy wrestling with her emotions to smack it off his face.

“You’ve missed me,” he said. Not a question, not even _I missed you_ , which would have been a much better opener.

“Maybe,” she said, because she couldn’t say no.

“C’mon,” he said, and jerked his chin toward the half-lit exit sign. Only the first two letters glowed: _EX_. How stupidly appropriate.

Again, it wasn’t a question, and she was too engrossed in not-feeling/being overwhelmed by feelings/hating how much she missed him to put up a fight when he led her through the door by her wrist.

The London night was warm, the air slightly muggy from the earlier rain. He pinned up against her; her back scraped the brick wall and her hands immediately went to his face, making him stoop to kiss her.

She could sort out her feelings later, she rationalized. She’d be able to think more clearly if she got this out of her system, she decided. She wanted him to know she still loved him, and she wanted that to be reason enough for him to love himself, too.

He’d come after her. That meant something, didn’t it? That meant everything.

But Damian’s kiss felt _wrong_. He usually took his time, starting out as a highly self-controlled tease, and she had to take the initiative to make it deeper, tongue and the pressure of teeth. This time, he was the one doing all the pushing, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Not with how long they’d been separated, and how they’d said goodbye. This wasn’t the hello that she’d expected or wanted.

Steph pushed back, not strong enough to shove him off but getting enough room to breathe.

“Not so fast, buster,” she said, frowning.

“Is this not what you sought tonight, my love?” Damian asked, his eyes frigid.

“No,” Steph said, her voice gaining strength and confidence even as something in her shriveled up from the ice in his stare. “Because the real Damian wouldn’t call me ‘my love’. He finds it demeaning. You should’ve studied harder before impersonating him, _asshole.”_

“Was it the kiss that showed me a fraud?” He laughed---but it wasn’t really a laugh. It was a cackle, bubbling up black and hysterical and inhuman.

Steph shook, but not from fear. No, she was way, way too furious to be scared of whoever or whatever was wearing Damian’s skin.

Nobody played with her emotions like that.

“Let. Me. Go,” she growled, her voice low and dangerous. Each word held a separate threat, and she didn’t care _what_ he was---she’d make good on them.

“But pet, you all but cried for me to come,” he purred, and his smirk was too wide and too oily to be Damian’s. He traced the line of her clavicle with his thumb, and she grabbed his wrist and squeezed with everything in her. He didn’t even blink.

“I couldn’t tell which joke would be the best,” he continued, unfazed. “To use this face, or the one in your nest.”

 _“Oy!_ You let her be!”

Steph had never been happier to hear Beryl’s booming voice. She had her hands on her hips, shoulders squared.

“And so the shining knight arrives,” the not-Damian said with a put-upon sigh. “Knightress: nagging, noxious, needling Knightress.”

“Listen here, ya tosser,” she said raising one foot. The bottom of her laced-up combat boots glittered with studs. “I’ve got a pair of hobnailed boots with your name on them, goblin. You and I both know what cold iron does to your kind, so you best shove off before I make you taste leather.”

“Many paint me with words fouler than these,” he said, but took a step back. Steph’s skin crawled where his fingers still gripped her arm. “You ruin all of the Goodfellow’s fun.”

“She’s a visitor, and quite off the menu for tonight, fun or no fun,” Beryl said darkly, walking closer. Each step she took was heavy; he flinched reflexively.

“T’was jest, Knightress, you have my solemn word,” he said quickly, finally letting go. “Just one Robin greeting another bird.”

“Right, right, like you’ve never maimed for the sake of maiming before, you militant, ugly imp. Go on, find your jollies somewhere else. Your so-called magic doesn’t impress me much.”

He was looking at Beryl, so Steph took the opening. She swung hard, punching him square in the jaw. He---it?---hissed, and sort of _melted._ He shrank, coarse brown hair sprouting all over his body. Blue eyes turned into bulbous red ones, his pupils stretching into feline slits. His mouth held more vicious, needle-sharp teeth than any mouth should be able to fit inside it. With a displacement of air that sucked the air out of her lungs, he disappeared.

“Did I just punch a fairy?” Steph gasped, her heart jackhammering in her ears. Beryl steadied her with one strong hand, nodding. She seemed kind of stunned herself. “And I mean a fairy-fairy.”

“More than that. You just took a swing at Robin Goodfellow himself. _The_ Puck.”

“Is that bad?”

She laughed suddenly and helplessly, wiping tears from the corner of her eyes. “Just funny, really. I don’t think a mortal’s gone through with the desire to beat his face in for a good couple of centuries. I can’t wait to tell Cyril about this. You’re mad, Steph. Mad, but wonderful.”

Mad, but wonderful. It felt like a good enough assessment of her Stephcialities.

 

*

 

Steph woke up the next morning to the smells of breakfast---coffee, eggs, bacon, and toast---and Beryl yelling “Come and get it while it’s still hot, fairy-slayer!”.

The greasy bacon and eggs sounded good right up until Steph rolled out of bed and walked into the kitchen; her stomach turned hard, soured, and she lost what little appetite she’d had. She managed to not double over the sink, but only just. This stress would be the death of her. Probably literally, at this rate.

“Morning!” Beryl said, moving the pan off the burner and giving her a one-armed hug. “Sleep well? I hope you did, after the night we had. I swear I won’t try pushing you out to socialize anymore. You can only piss off so many immortals before it comes back to bite you.”

“I’ve punched a fairy, a familiar, a witch-boy, and a pilgrim from Limbo Town,” Steph said with a yawn, hugging her back. “Odds aren’t in my favor, but what else is new?”

“Yeah. About that. I’ve got something for you.”

That’s when Beryl brought out the rest of the groceries: a bottle of off-brand sports drink and three pregnancy tests.

“Are you kidding me?” Steph demanded, her voice weirdly high. Her cheeks burned. Sure, she’d been moody and sick, but _pregnant?_ Wasn’t that jumping to conclusions? That was leaping wildly over a canyon of common sense and into conclusions.

“It’s just---” Beryl sighed, frustrated. She put the boxes on the table between them. “Something Puck said last night got under my skin. Tricksters lie when it pleases them, but he didn’t have much of a reason to. He was leading you on ‘cos of your old name. Names and wordplay fascinate his kind.” She rubbed her eyes with the balled-up heel of her hand. She didn’t look like she’d gotten much sleep. “When I found you, he said that he couldn’t decide if he should prank you by wearing a glamour of Damian’s face, or if he should’ve waited until you’d ‘nested’ to have his fun.”

“Birds build nests,” Steph said lamely. “And robins are birds. Stunning detective work.”

“That’s just it. _Why_ do birds build nests?” She waited for her to supply an answer, but Steph’s voice had died in her throat. “To lay eggs in ‘em. They build ‘em for their babies. And see, fairies love babies. Sometimes, they take pretty, charming human babies and replace them with fae---changelings, they call ‘em.”

“So he was saying that he was thinking of waiting until I’d---I’d had a baby, then take it from me?”

The thought hit her at her deepest, where she kept old feelings she’d never been able to sort out. The loss of her baby had never gone away. It’d just been buried, because rationality said that she’d made the right decision.

“Fairies have a terrible sense of humor,” Beryl said, biting her lip. “And he might have been messing with your head just by planting the seed of that idea, y’know?”

“Yeah,” she said with a laugh that didn’t sound anywhere near the realm of _right._

“So, I say you check. It’s the simplest ailment to check off the list,” she said gently, like the likelihood of her suspicions having any grounding at all was low. “Just piss on the sticks and be done with it, yeah? I’m half convinced that you’re making yourself sick with nerves alone. I know plenty of women who’ve worked themselves up like that.”

Steph inspected the boxes like they were bug poison, reading all the tiny text on the sides for warnings and instructions and whatever calming niceties they had printed about their accuracy.

“You’re right,” she said, pushing away the plain toast she’d been nibbling on. “I mean, we used protection every time. Hell, we doubled up on it, usually. We went without a condom _once_.”

“Right,” Beryl said with a firm nod, and started dishing up her plate. Steph retreated into the bathroom before the slippery-greasy smell of it coated the back of her throat and got to her.

Once in there, she took her time. She breathed. She relaxed. There was no way she’d be able to pee on command if she was bunched into a nervous knot of frantic _what if what if what ifs_ and visions of babies replaced by monsters. This would tell her that she was being silly; ha ha, Puck had gotten one over on her and the joke was totally on her. This would tell her that even entertaining the idea was indulging in her biological clock’s ticking, her loneliness, and that selfish, stupid thought that maybe Damian had left her with something that she could keep and protect, no matter what happened to him.

She took the boxes apart systematically, carefully, reading and re-reading the directions one more time. Open stick, pee on stick, wait for results.

This was not rocket science. She could do this.

Steph poured herself a glass of water with shaking hands while she waited for the first test to develop.

It didn't take as long as she'd predicted for the blue line to appear.

Water sloshed over the side, a quivering maelstrom in a cup, and she ended up getting more on her shirt than in her mouth. She picked at the front of her wet nightshirt, swearing under her breath. Beryl was going to start wondering what was taking her so long, and she honestly did not put it past her to kick down the door if she wouldn't answer. She had to---had to think. Had to get herself together.

A part of her had known, deep down, that the test was going to be positive. She’d wondered, because she’d been through this whole mess before. She tried to rationalize it away---her periods had never been super regular---but a part of her had known.

And she'd wanted it. She'd wanted it so bad that it was frightening. It was the kind of desire that consumed, so she'd hoped that drowning it out with reason would make it go away before it could dig its claws into her. It was an old wish, a deep one, and one that she’d mostly given up on. Unfortunately, her gut feeling had turned out to be reality, so she had a little plastic stick with a blue positive line and a growing sensation of vertigo.

 _Think, Steph. Don't panic. Think. This is what you wanted, isn't it? You wanted to get pregnant again. You wanted a baby. Maybe not right now, but you wanted this. You could do worse than a Wayne baby, right?_

Bile rose in the back of her throat, hot and bitter. A Wayne baby. Pregnant with a Wayne baby. Did that count as Brown Luck?

Her wet shirt was already getting cold and uncomfortable. She pulled up the hem of it, lip sucked between her teeth, and looked at herself. Steph still had scars that had yet to fade and heal. The faint slice of her c-section scar was old and faint. It’d been a long time, but here she was again.

She spread her shaking hands hand flat over her belly, closing her eyes.

“Stephanie?” Beryl’s pounding on the door made her jump reflexively and knock over her water. Christ, she was a _mess._ “You fall in?”

It took her a couple of seconds to find her voice again. It was small, too small for her usual cheerful exuberance.

“One sec!”

The second and third test had developed and they all bore the same cheerfully positive results. One was a blue line, one was a plus, one just said _positive,_ clear as day. Steph wrapped up the tests and threw them in the trash can. She washed her hands, then washed her face with cold water. She wasn't sure when she'd started crying, but she had. Her face felt too hot as she dried it.

"I'm fine," she said. Steph opened the door, hanging up the towel. She mopped up the spilled water and tidied the bathroom counter like she didn't know what to do with herself, with her hands. "I'm fine."

The look on Beryl’s face said, very clearly, that she could tell that she was anything but fine.

“Positive, innit?” She asked, brow split with a worry line.

"I'm---"

She hesitated. Actually saying it aloud felt like jinxing it, like inviting in a boogeyman just by acknowledging its reality. Maybe it'd be safer just to ignore it, pretend that it wasn't there so that no one else could know and target her because of it. Steph felt wobbly, like her limbs were noodles and her joints were made of jelly. When Beryl manhandled her into a half-hug, she let her.

"I'm pregnant." The words were too strong. "Probably pregnant. _Most likely_ pregnant. Three tests are a good indication, even if they're fallible." She laughed, thin and shaky. “Brown Luck strikes again.”

“It’s early yet,” Beryl said, her tone carefully cautious. “If you can’t have it, y’know you---”

“No!” Steph said sharply---so sharply, it edged on hysterics. She made herself calm down, made herself _breathe._ Knightress didn’t know the full story, so getting all worked up would mean that she’d have to get into it. And Steph really, really didn’t want to get into it. She didn’t want to have to start with her _once upon a time, when I was a teenager and only a little bit more reckless than I am now, I made a mistake. In retrospect, it might not be as big as this one._ “No. I’m keeping it.”

If she thought that Steph was being irrationally rash, Beryl didn’t voice her opinion. Beryl just rubbed her back and nodded, playing the part of the supportive friend. Steph hugged her for that and that alone.

“The Bat’s the dad, then? No other gentlemen to rope into this?”

“Barring immaculate conception, yes.”

“A nasty bit of business, that.” Beryl paused, worrying a hank of her short ginger hair between her thumb and forefinger. “You going to tell him?”

“No,” Stephanie said, lacing her hands protectively over her stomach, and her heart broke just a little bit more. “He can’t know.”

“And it’s _he can’t know_ , not _I can’t tell him,”_ she said, the two options weighed with emphasis.

It was Metropolis all over again. People assumed the worst from Damian, and she couldn’t peel away that anti-bat bias for long enough to get her point across. Telling them who he was with her translated to others as the excuses of an abused woman. She wanted to just shake them, make them _look_ at her, demand if they really thought that what her Daddy had done to her had made her weak to controlling men. She wanted them to trust her---to trust _him._ He felt that almost everyone was against him, so he’d cut out the need for allies who would watch his back. It’d cost him everything, but he’d done it.

Steph pressed her hands against her eyes, hard. “It’s not what you think.”

“I’m not thinking what you think I am,” Beryl said, her gaze sharp and earnest. “Communications powers are what I do, right? I know what you’re trying to get across, even if I have to dodge between the lines a bit. Sounds to me like you’re protecting him or sommat, not the other way around.”

The warmth that rushed through her made Steph feel lifted off her feet, floating. Finally. Finally, someone who got it. Finally, someone who didn’t just _assume_ that her situation was what it looked like at first glance.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice reduced to a dry whisper. “That’s pretty much it.”

Beryl gnawed on her lower lip.

“You need a cuppa,” she announced, putting a hand on her arm and squeezing. “More tea than I might have on hand, but it’ll be a start. I’ll ring up Hank and tell him to put the kettle on. If you don’t have any objections, I’d like to pull Cyril into this chat. He’s as trustworthy as they come, and if he can help I know that he will.”

Steph’s kneejerk reaction was a lot like how a middle school kid felt when a teacher kindly offered to talk to the principal or a counselor about the ‘worrying’ collection of bruises she had---at least, that’s how her childhood had gone. Her reaction at that moment was the same when faced with the idea of seeking help from an authority figure: no, she was fine, she could handle it, she didn’t want anyone sticking their fingers in her private business. Daddy had given her such a warped view of what unsolicited help from upstanding people entailed.

“No,” she said, combing back her bed-tangled hair nervously. “It’s---I’ll figure it out on my own. I’m okay. I don’t want to bother him with this.”

Beryl frowned deeply. “I don’t know what you’re going on about, ‘cos as far as I’m concerned, friends are never a bother. You’re a friend, and Hutchinsons don’t make light of friendship. Sheldrakes, neither. I don’t think now’s the time to cling to pride. And three heads are better than two, right?”

Most of Steph’s head was spinning, a looped train of panic that kept adding on speed and cars the longer she worried the issue. She was pregnant, she was technically homeless, it was Damian’s, it was _Damian’s and hers_ , she couldn’t fight, she couldn’t do this without support, she couldn’t go back to Metropolis or Gotham and expect it _not_ to get back to Damian that she was pregnant, and he’d know, he’d know that she hadn’t been with anyone else, and he’d---what would he do? What would he say? Would he pressure her to abort, would he want to be the father, or would he ignore it and her? She didn’t know which one terrified her more.

This was different from the first time. Dean had been a washed-up nobody at twenty, so she’d been able to drop him like a bad habit and excise him from her life. She hadn’t loved him---had barely even liked him. It’d been easy, comparably, and her choice had been made for her. She loved Damian, and she wanted this child, and there was a high possibility that putting a baby with half his genetics up for adoption would end badly further on down the road, so for once she truly had no idea what to do.

Her luck. Her awful, awful _Brown Luck._

Beryl put her arm around her again, letting her lean her weight into her. Steph hadn’t realized she’d been trembling until Beryl started to rub her back soothingly.

“Listen. I know one of your secrets, so you can have one of mine. S’only fair. Cyril’s my---” Her eyelashes fluttered as she closed her eyes, visibly trying to dredge up a word. “---I don’t know if there’s a word for what he is to me, but he’s been trying to make me Countess of Wordenshire for a good five years now. I’ve turned him down more times than I can count, ‘cos I’m a Knight, not a Countess. It’d be a scandal, seeing as the people of Wordenshire have certain expectations of Hutchinsons and Sheldrakes, and class-climbing nonsense isn’t one of ‘em. I---I s’pose what I mean, is that I get what it’s like to fill that empty spot in a man’s soul, even if it don’t look right to everyone else.”

If she were being honest, Steph had already known that there was something between them. The way Cyril looked at Beryl wasn’t the way a man looked at his pseudo-little sister; his love was quiet and real and deep. The difference between the way Beryl had saved Cyril and the way that Steph had saved Damian was small, but profound: instead of filling an empty spot in his soul, she’d filled the vacuous space where his soul had been.

That’s what she’d imagined, at least. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“He’ll understand,” Beryl said, gently insistent. “We care about you, you batty girl. Let’s put our heads together and come up with a plan.”

Steph nodded numbly. She needed _something_ stable to hold onto.

 

*

 

The Sheldrake castle was a _real_ castle, older than any other building Steph had personally been in, and the narrow archer’s windows and hilltop perch spoke of it being built in much different times. On the inside, there was the requisite family heirlooms and tapestries, rich baubles of nobility, but it’d all been laced with modern creature comforts. Cyril’s study, his favorite room in the castle, was ancient and modern all at once. Trailing Beryl inside, Steph was half afraid to touch anything---it felt too much like a museum exhibit, despite the television on the one wall not covered floor to ceiling by shelves bursting with leather-bound books.

“Ah!” Cyril said, a hand over his mouth as he discreetly finished chewing his bite of toast. “You’re just in time. Wayne’s on the telly. I think you might want to hear this.”

“What that bag of hot air’s got to say isn’t important right now,” Beryl said, then shot an apologetic look at Steph. “No offense to you or your taste, of course.”

“None taken,” she said magnanimously. “He _is_ a jerk. I know this better than anyone.”

“Erm. Well.” Cyril floundered. “It’s about you, actually. Er. _Batwoman_ , but. That’s you.”

Steph sat down a little bit quicker than she meant to, but not quickly enough to beat the dizzy spell that rushed up and over her.

“What. The _hell_. Is he doing?” She growled, somewhere between horrified and furious.

A press conference about Batwoman? He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t _dare_ disavow supporting her as a member of what remained of Batman Incorporated. He could be petty, and vengeance was built into his job description, but he wouldn’t try to get back at her. He was better than that. Plus, the title of Batwoman wasn’t his to give and take. Batman had never appointed Batwoman, and Kate had given her blessing.

He couldn’t take that away from her. He knew how important it was to her, how much she needed to be a Bat. Damian wouldn’t shame her publicly for wronging him...would he?

Her stomach lurched, stress and morning sickness all rolled into one sticky, bitter bundle. Beryl sat down next to her, placing a wastebasket on the floor between them.

“If you need it, don’t hesitate,” she told her in an undertone.

To his credit, Cyril was doing a good job of keeping his questions to himself. He was far too polite to demand why Batwoman might be in danger of throwing up in his study, so he ate his toast and waited to be included in whatever it is that was happening.

Bless the man and his patience, Steph thought as her stomach did mad acrobatics under her ribs. She’d had morning sickness during her first pregnancy, but it hadn’t been anywhere near as vicious. The amount of worrying and running around England that she’d been doing hadn’t helped, probably.

It hit her then that she’d have to hang up the cape for at least the next... Steph did some quick mental math; if her last night with Damian had been the time of conception, she’d be somewhere around nine or ten weeks. That meant that she’d be out of commission as Batwoman for the better part of a year, so whatever Damian had to say about her would be null and void, anyway. That made her feel at least a little bit better, though disappearing for that long might mean he’d come looking for her.

Steph wasn’t sure if she wanted that or not. She was caught precariously between extremes, and weighing the pros and cons wasn’t helping dredge up an answer.

Seeing him on screen didn’t help, either. To anyone who knew him only as the trust fund son of the late Bruce Wayne, billionaire and industry giant, he radiated calm charisma. His suit was impeccable, and not one hair was out of place. He could’ve been a movie star, a stranger paid to present a perfect front. He was _too_ glossily well-kept, which no one but her would have been able to guess. If he looked that put together, it was because he’d had to put real time, effort, and concentration to look that put together. Not even him, with his superior genetics, could look that flawless without trying.

She hated herself a little bit, right then. He was struggling, and even though she was, too, _she_ had support. She had her own friends. He had the cat, and the cat wouldn’t turn into his namesake and give him advice and distractions and tea when he needed them. He had Colin, but she doubted he’d go to him for encouragement. When upset, he shut everyone out and shut down. Damian was alone, and she hated that he’d put her in the position that tormented them both.

But he was a prideful man, and he wouldn’t back down. That was what scared her.

A small throng of disorganized reporters were spread around him, cameras and boom poles and men and women in nice suits thrusting microphones at him. The closest one---a man she recognized from the Gotham Evening News---held a mic too close to him, making his lip curl automatically.

“Mr. Wayne, Chet Simms from Channel Six News. You’ve kept funding your father’s ‘Batman Incorporated’ project, footing the bill for costumed vigilantes worldwide. In the last month, Gotham’s own Batwoman has been repeatedly seen with the British heroine Knightress. Is this a move toward planting American heroes on foreign soil?”

Steph pressed a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t thought what it would look like, her staying in England for weeks. She just hadn’t thought. The politics involved in vigilante work went completely over her head; she was a puncher and a kicker, not a businesswoman or diplomat. When Bruce had made Batman Inc public, he’d changed the rules of the game. Batman left the realm of urban legends, confirming for the world that he was yet another man on a payroll. This had taken away the edge off his mystery---though, the age of the cell phone camera and the internet had done that for him, mostly. It’d put them into the public eye, which opened them to public scrutiny. There was nothing that the media liked more than to put their two cents in, and it’d never even _occurred_ to her.

“That operative is indeed working under direction of Batman Incorporated,” Damian lied smoothly. “But you must understand, Mr. Simms, that I seek to preserve my father’s best intentions in every way possible. Batman Inc’s goal is not---as you imply---to sow seeds of conquest globally. Presenting such an idea is not only completely uninformed, it insults the memory of this city’s most brilliant philanthropist. My father did not want to control others who followed in the footsteps of his Batman. He provided funding and aid to those who would take up the role of vigilantes of their own accord, and his criteria for inclusion were morally sound and kept as law. He did this at great personal cost, and to much criticism.”

“Yes,” said the polished reporter, obviously trying to guide him back to the juicy details and away from discussing the finer points of the late, great Bruce Wayne. “But England’s crime rate doesn’t warrant sending the Batwoman there, does it? Or do you know something that the rest of the world doesn’t know, Mr. Wayne?”

“I am a businessman, not a crimefighting mastermind,” Damian said frostily, though every word was carefully tamed. “That operative acts alone. If you bring this up because you believe that Gotham will be left unprotected, be assured that the Batman has no intention of leaving. Gotham is his to protect, and he would never shirk his duty.” His nostrils flared, and she knew---she _knew_ \---that he was suppressing a derisive little _tt_. “If I’ve answered your questions to your satisfaction, I believe we’re finished here.”

Hands shot up, paired with cries of _“Mr. Wayne!”_ , but he waved them off with a barely-audible murmur of “No more questions, please,” and was escorted to his car. The anchorman cut to commercials, and Steph exhaled the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

“Well,” Beryl said, the first to break the silence. Her head was cocked slightly to the left in thought. “He’s gone a bit mental, hasn’t he?”

“What?” Steph looked at her quizzically, surprised. _She’d_ gathered that much, but she was an expert in deciphering what Damian was saying. “I mean, yeah, yeah he is, but I didn’t think it was obvious.”

“He looks cool as a cucumber, sure, but.” Beryl paused. Her brows knitted, her eyes softened with sympathy. “It’s what he wasn’t saying that’s telling. He couldn’t say your name. Not even once.”

“It’s good news though, isn’t it?” Cyril asked, searching them both for answers overtop is teacup. “He more or less said that Batwoman’s still under his protection, yeah?”

“More or less,” Beryl said, still frowning at the screen. “More less than more, I feel. He didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to say anything on the matter at all. What a sad, sorry sap.”

“It’s not my place to pry, Stephanie,” said Cyril, hesitant and polite in a way only he could pull off believably. “But leaving Gotham was your choice, wasn’t it? I’d assumed that you’d been, erm, pushed out a bit for whatever reason, but this...”

Even to complete strangers and guarded by a sheet of forced indifference, Damian didn’t look or sound like a man who’d thrown his girlfriend and partner out into the cold.

Steph could all but feel Beryl holding back on explaining the little that she knew, and she was grateful for that. But, she’d been right. Cyril honestly seemed to want to help, and they were far enough removed from the politics and tangles of the American heroes that she felt safe telling them.

“I left. It was my choice, because he---he got himself into this friggin’ _mess_ and he wouldn’t let me or anyone else help him out of it. He was killing himself over it, and I just. I couldn’t watch him do it, you know? He’s a good man, but he doesn’t believe that he is. He’s stubborn, and arrogant, and stupid, and---and he’s going to be a father. Oh my god, _he’s_ going to be a father,” Steph mumbled into her fingers. The thought kept coming back around, shocking her over and over in small ways.

She could actually _watch_ the realization hit Cyril, the dawning knowledge rising as his eyebrows arched up toward his hairline.

“He’s---? Oh. Erm. That’s---it’s very...”

“What he means to say is congratulations,” Beryl said, rubbing her back. “And we’re both very happy for you.”

“Yes. Both?” When Beryl nodded at him, color crept up past his collar. _“Both._ Yes. Quite happy for you.”

“If you need to stay here through it, all you have to do is ask me, ducks. There’s not much room, but we can,” Beryl seemed to mentally map her flat for any room that could fit a baby, frowning. “Re-organize. I’d wager there’s plenty of space that can be freed up if we just tidied up a bit. I love babies, you know. Wouldn’t be a bother.”

“Nonsense,” Cyril said, setting his cup of tea back in its saucer with a faint _tink_ of possible finality. “You’ll stay here. Erm. Both, that is.” He looked at Beryl, trying hard to interpret her reaction. “If you’d like.”

A single pregnant woman staying with the Earl of Wordenshire would spell scandal in big red letters, so that _both_ held a lot of meaning. It was an invitation to Steph, of course, but even more of an invitation to Beryl. He looked so cautiously hopeful, Steph kind of wanted to walk over and hug him and thank him for being such a decent human being.

“Would you make me take out me piercings?” Beryl asked after giving it an eternally long moment’s thought.

“You know how I feel about you sticking bits of metal in your pretty face,” Cyril sighed. “But no, I would not.”

She paused again, her fingers skating a soothing pattern over Steph’s back.

“Would I have to cook?”

“I’d really rather if you didn’t,” he said, kind but very firm.

Beryl shrugged like it was no big deal---like she hadn’t just agreed to make their libelous relationship public, like she had expected him to pop that question all along, like she hadn’t more or less said that she’d be his Countess if she wasn’t required to take out her piercings or cook. That was how Beryl was, though.

“Well, that settles it,” she said cheerfully, snagging and eating the rest of Cyril’s toast. “Both it is.”

Yeah, this was exactly what Steph had needed. For the first time in weeks, she felt like she’d gotten enough distance to breathe again. She had friends, and she had a sense of security, and she had a worst-case-scenario kind of plan. She could stay in Worden until she knew what to do with herself, and if that meant having a baby in England, that option was open for her. It was a relief, moving away from that free-fall limbo of _what now?_.

“Truly, I don’t mean to pry, but...if Wayne does come calling, I don’t know how to greet him,” Cyril said in the contemplative silence that followed. “If he’s got himself into a mess, helping him out of jam would be the least I could do for him, and for you, and for his father’s memory. I, ah. Drat.”

“What my Cyril means,” Beryl said, forever the interpreter for her earl. “Is that we’d be better prepared for this if we knew what made you pack your bags.”

Steph hadn’t been able to tell anyone. She’d held her tongue for three reasons: out of respect for Damian’s privacy, because she knew that half the heroing community would flip out if they knew what he’d done, and because she hadn’t been sure that they’d _believe_ her. Belief in magic was one thing---and most had to see it first-hand to believe in it---but adding in demons and angels to the mix prompted many an eye-roll. Too many charlatans, human and otherwise, falsely advertised themselves as demons to make people believe in the existence of the real deal.

If she hadn’t seen Damian die and come back again and again, she would’ve had trouble believing it herself.

But England wasn’t America, and what was and wasn’t believable was different, here.

Steph took a deep breath, propping up her confidence.

“Ever heard of a Faustian deal?”

 

*

 

He was an eternally discordant creature, thriving on the contradictory. Shrinks and psychics had poked around the dim-lit corridors of his brain before, and they’d either lost hope in base truths or had been driven mad. They brought it on themselves, worming in where they didn’t belong.

Many had tried to put labels on them, but he’d worked most of them off. The simplest one---the truest one---was that he was a punk. He’d been born a punk, seeping anger like a poorly healed wound slowly oozing pus, and so when the movement came, he was there with bloody knuckles. Most of his kind had either sobered up or burnt out, but he was a slippery customer. If the fire demanded a sacrifice, he offered a breathing Guy in his stead. He didn’t particularly like himself---or the rest of humanity, by extension---but he didn’t particularly want to die, either.

He knew what was waiting down there. He’d taken the guided tour more than once---had gulped down a slippery tongue that’d tasted like battery acid and the keening cries of every babe left to die of exposure in the hopes that it’d please a God who frankly didn’t give a fuck. His blood still sang darkly from the places he’d been, the deals he’d made. His heart chugged hell’s sewage, and another man might have begged imperfect contrition.

But he was a punk, even at age sixty-seven. He didn’t look a day over damned, though, so he was younger than his years. When asked, he attributed it to good drugs, better sex, and a vow never to let a bad habit be left untried. He didn’t want to be saved, and he didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to have to drink anything but quality liquor.

So he didn’t.

His nights blended, but life was all about that blend, wasn’t it? Nothing was ever simple, and nothing had a pure form. Not good, and certainly not evil, and mankind was inherently neither. If anything, mankind was inherently stupid, but made up for this birth defect by being stubborn.

This night was still young, two fingers of salmon-colored sunset spread over the worn bartop. He was sober enough to breathe in his surroundings, interested enough in his fellow drinkers not to tune out their braying quite yet. They didn’t have anything new to offer him, but sometimes they surprised him. This wasn’t his usual bar, nor his usual town, but when he was in a fair mood---and didn’t want Fate and Destiny to fuck each other raw---he just put one foot in front of the other and saw where it led him. It expedited the process of being in the right place at the right time.

His entertainment for the night had come early, too. He knew the blond woman in the borrowed duster---had to be borrowed; she was too short for it---was what had brought him there, but he let her come to him, first. Letting them choose the first line made them less skittish, he’d found, and gave him room enough to decide if he gave a shit or not. She’d been staring at him intently for the better part of fifteen minutes, screwing up what was probably too much courage for her body and well-being. Then, she sat down next to him.

“Hi,” she said, her accent brassily American. “Can we talk?”

"You don't get something for nothing, luv," he said, addressing his tepid beer more than the woman sitting next to him. He'd seen a hundred thousand girls like him in his time: pretty, but not too pretty, neatly dressed, but not too smooth, aggressive, but not to the point that someone would slap her with choice four letter words.

"I know. Believe me. That's kind of my problem."

She put an unopened pack of Silk Cuts on the bar top, flicking it negligently toward him across the gummy wood.

Ah, lovely. She knew just who she was talking to, then. Nothing chance about this meeting.

Complicated, but interesting. He wasn't a man who did things because the were right or wrong, or even because he did or didn't want to do them. He did the things that interested him, rather than the things that kept humanity as a whole from fucking itself to death. He was a bastard of the highest order, but once in a while he mucked about with what he considered charity work. It was always more trouble than it was worth, but it kept him young.

That, or the remnants of Nergal’s blood that befouled his veins. Either-or.

"How's that to start with? PS, the Earl of Wordenshire says hi, and that you still owe him one for that time with that thing and the hooker."

He smiled. Couldn’t help it, really.

"Mm. Bend my ear a bit, then. What has you here? Business? Pleasure?"

"Deals," she said, and smiled like a wolf instead of a girl. "Heard you knew your way around them. I've got this problem on my hands, and I want to cheat. I want to cheat the _fuck_ out of it."

Such fire, such determination. Women like her were the reason humanity hadn’t successfully wiped itself out---not yet, anyway.

"The key isn't cheating, luv,” John Constantine grinned, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth to light. “It's knowing who it is you’re scamming, and knowing how much you’ll _bleed_ for it.”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” the poor girl said, and he believed her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The clock’s ticking, mommabear,” he said, and didn’t sound like he was laughing anymore.

It only took about twenty seconds of talking to John Constantine for Steph to realize that she'd never talked to a man like John Constantine before, and she'd probably never talk to a man like him again. She was usually good at figuring people out. If she had any inborn talent at all, it was communication. She didn't have Beryl's level of mastery, but she could almost always tell what was and wasn't really being said, and why.

John defied definition. She couldn't tell what was going on in his head, other than she probably didn't want to know the details. There were some people that she wanted to understand, and some that she knew she was better off holding them at arm's length. John was one of the latter, as interesting a man as he was.

But she'd expected that. Beryl hadn't come out and said that he was _dangerous_ , but she'd hedged around the word enough to make Steph believe that he was more dangerous than words could paint and too slippery to outline. Her advice had been brief: "Don't muck around with pretending to be anyone you're not, 'cos he hates that. If he says he doesn't want to get involved, tell him thank you anyhow and leave. He's got a way about him, Steph. He's sold friends to save his own skin, so you'd best believe he'd do that and more to a stranger."

She'd kept that in mind, but she hadn't let it scare her. John was the first real lead that she'd had, and she wasn't going to flub that chance by worrying about what he may or may not do if he didn't like her.

Her personal brand of fearlessness---one part actual fearlessness, one part stubbornness, and one part just not knowing when to give up when the getting was good---hadn't failed her too badly over the years, and it'd just happened to charm Mr. Constantine. He had, he admitted over beer and a cigarette she wouldn't let him light, something of a soft spot for spitfires. Some may have called women like her harpies or bossy or even just bitches, but he preferred a brass tacks kind of girl, especially in this day and age.

Steph didn't tell him who she was, or whose soul she was petitioning for, but she she had a feeling that he knew already. She didn't use names, but the particular tilt of a grin made her all too sure that he thought her hardwired desire to keep some kind of secret identity was adorable.

Magic people. They were kind of smug, when it came right down to it.

"And he's an asshole," she said, with the moody surety of someone who knew exactly how _much_ of an asshole Damian could be. "But I still feel like the situation he got himself into isn't his fault, you know? He was a kid. He didn't know what he was doing, and I don't think that he ever really wanted to make the deal. He just figures he's stuck with it now. He's doing this whole martyr thing, and he doesn’t even know about the baby yet---and I know that’ll make it worse. Frankly, it's pissing me off."

“Well,” John said, rolling his shoulders in a barely-there, barely-invested shrug. “If you tell him about the bun he put in your oven, he’ll straighten out on his own. Odds are in your favor. Blue-bloods ‘ave two ways about propriety: he’ll either marry you to make your bastard legal, or he’ll give you the means to live before he sweeps you under the rug.”

“He won’t do either,” she said firmly. She couldn’t even name the sharp edges that were poking into her, the emotions that churned and grated on the inside. Being reduced to ‘wronged, knocked up lover’ terms felt cheap, and calling her baby a bastard felt worse by far. She and Damian had never been caught up in impressing anyone else, or following societal standards. They'd respected each other, and she'd---she’d promised herself that after Dean, she’d never be _that girl_ again. “Because I’m not going to tell him about the baby. I don’t want him to be influenced by what he thinks he ‘owes’ me.”

“Ah!” John cried, mock-hurt. “So you’re one of those, then. _Dirty rotten idealist._ And I’d had such hopes for you, luv.”

“I’m an idealist, but I’ll still cheat to get my way. In this scenario, ‘my way’ is getting him out of hell. I’m giving the man a choice, but if I have to show my full hand, so be it.”

“Now, see,” John said, finishing his beer and raising two fingers to the bartender for another. “That’s where things get a mite sticky. I know you think he’s a real gem, but scrub off that lovey film for two moments. What makes you figure that he isn’t headed for hell _anyhow?”_

And that thought hadn’t ever really occurred to her---not like that, not fully.

Damian was a killer. Past tense, sure, but sins were sins and he’d never sought absolution. She had no concept of how many people he’d murdered as a child, no idea how many lives he’d snuffed out.

Murderers ended up in hell. They had their own reserved seating. Seventh circle, front row.

“Gotta powder my nose,” Steph said, pushing her chair back with shaking hands.

She calmly walked to the bathroom, opened the door, and stood beside the sinks. She had to swallow repeatedly to clear the bile surging a hot line up the back of her throat, but she did--- _had_ to. She had to keep her head, had to stay strong, even though her body was fighting her every step of the way.

Steph was stubborn as hell. If there was any one word that described her, it was _determined_ , chased closely by _hopeful_ , and whether Damian liked it or not, all that stubborn hope was going to be pushed in his face. She wasn’t--- _couldn’t_ \---ignore her pregnancy, but there were things that had to be done.

Yes, Damian had made mistakes. Yes, he had done horrible things. She was intimately familiar with all of that. But if _she_ gave up on him---when he wasn’t even twenty-one years old and had already given up on himself for all eternity---who did he have in his corner of the ring? Nobody.

She loved him. He was an asshole who hated himself and most of the people around him, but she loved him.

So Steph gripped the edge of the sink with one hand, biting the fingers of her other. She bit down hard on her knuckles, forcing herself to breathe evenly and control her body and its reactions. Yes, she was pregnant. Yes, her hormones and emotions were going through wild ups and downs.

But goddammit, she was _still Batwoman._

It took a few minutes, but she wrestled herself under control. Her knuckles throbbed from where her teeth had dug in, but she hadn’t thrown up. Every small victory was celebrated, at this point.

John had ordered her a ginger ale and stirred it with a straw until it was flat, leaving it on the bar in front of her empty chair with no comment. She sipped it gratefully when she sat back down, though it didn’t do much to settle her stomach.

“I don’t care,” she said, once she’d taken a drink and swallowed down her nausea for good. “I’m going to save him anyway.”

“By the golden standards, his soul isn’t worth saving. He’s no great hero,” John said, giving her a sideways glance. He had this way of looking at her that made her feel like he could see through her, at least a little. She had loads of new insight as to why Bruce hadn’t liked the magical crowd. “ _But_ , that doesn’t make saving him impossible. If you think there’s something in the little bastard worth keeping around, that’s your prerogative. All it means is that it won’t be easy. A simple switch is one thing, but you’ll have to barter.”

“Barter?” she repeated, chasing the thought with a gulp of ginger ale.

He nodded. “See, there’s two ways about this thing. Demons don’t do nothing they don’t want to, so you’ve got to have their number dialed in, so to speak. You’ve gotta have some leverage, and it absolutely must be good, or you run the risk of ending up a bloody smear. Either you blackmail one of the slimy bastards, or you trade ‘em something of greater value than what they’ve got. It’s imperative that they feel like they’re the one getting the most out of the exchange.”

John’s voice sounded tinny and far away. The magnitude of what he was saying was too big to process, so it left her numb.

“So, if I want to get his soul back, I have to sell someone else’s soul,” Steph heard herself say.

“That’s it precisely. And if you’re going to do it, it has to be soon,” he said, flicking a pointed look at her stomach. “‘Cos demons have a cultured taste for the flesh of innocents, and nothing’s as innocent as a newborn. Demons think it poetic---as soon as you have it, they won’t take anything else in a trade. It won’t be interested until it’s born, though. It’s not considered a proper soul until it’s taken its first breath on its own.” John shrugged again, mulling over his beer. “And don’t harp on the ethics and issues of that. I’m only telling you how they play the game, not saying how it ought to be played.”

Steph nodded mechanically. She understood. She was silently repulsed by the mere _idea_ , but she understood.

If she was going to save Damian, she’d have to damn someone else to hell in his place. If she was going to save him and not jeopardize the life of their child, she’d have to do it in the next couple of months. If she was going to save him because he wanted to be saved and not because he felt obligated to her, she’d have to do it before she started showing. That left her with a horrific decision to make and no time to make it in.

Her lungs felt crushed by the sheer hopelessness of the situation.

Maybe she'd been wrong all along.

Maybe Wayne luck was even worse than Brown luck.

 

*

 

Jason could keep track of the day of the week by keeping a finger pressed to the pulse of the street. For all the ups and downs, all the coups and attempts to push control one way or the other, there was a rhythm to it. For someone like him, who had been a part of the street for what amounted to too much of his life, he could swear by it. Everything was cyclical. Domestic abuse on paydays and holidays was no-brainer stuff, but it went deeper than that. Aggravated assaults and murders happened the most on Saturdays and Sundays, climbing steadily through the day and peaking around midnight. Burglaries and thefts were more common during the week, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays. Thefts spiked in the early evenings, burglaries in the early mornings. Summer meant ice cream trucks and murders. Schizos fell apart during full moons. Jason didn’t need a calendar or a watch when he had the bloody dregs of humanity keeping time for him.

There was a weird kind of comfort in it, a familiarity. So long as there was crime, he had a reason to prowl the streets and keep a finger on its pulse. How he felt about his role had a cycle, too. Sometimes it was a grim satisfaction, sometimes it was a burden, but it always was _his_ role.

He was a bad man who did bad things. All the little bats and birds knew that.

So that was why it jarred him when something shifted, something _changed_ , and the city’s pulse increased its beat. Batman---and all the men who had worn that cowl---was as constant as crime itself, always semi-visible unless he had a damn good reason not to patrol. A couple of months back, though, the Bat had disappeared for almost two weeks. Now, his presence was erratic---sometimes he’d be at the edge of Jason’s periphery for a week solid, then he’d be gone for days. In that week or more that he was around, he was fucking _everywhere_ : relentless and increasingly violent, rattling the gutters from dusk to dawn without any breaks. Then there’d be a day or two of absolute radio silence, and the cycle would turn over.

Jason wasn’t sure what to make of it. Dick and Bruce had been cut from similar cloth, altruistic and self-limiting. Damian, though---Damian was more like Jason himself than any of the others. His limitations were the ones that Bruce had set, and he’d been over the edge of them before. He hadn’t thought that the kid would adjust well to being Daddy’s little stand-in, but for the last couple of years he’d been pretty stable.

Something had changed, and he had a feeling it had to do with the fact that his better half was doing the Bat equivalent to backpacking around Europe. He’d watched this all play out, interested but not all that invested, and figured that it was none of his business if the Batman was losing his shit. Hell, it would be kind of poetic, in a way. Jason hadn’t planned to get involved, but he’d always gotten sucked into the politics of the Wayne legacy whether he liked it or not.

This time, it started with a phone call. It figured that it was a Saturday, which meant aggravated assault with a light sprinkling of drug running thrown in to keep things fresh. Jason was pinned behind a stack of shipping crates, but he wasn’t all that worried about it. Most hoods were dumb, and poorly-equipped to boot. Sometimes, the key to victory was patience, because sooner or later they would run out of ammo and stop spraying bullets. It’d take a lot more than some strung-out idiots with shitty Chinese knock-offs of shitty Russian guns to take him out.

Maybe he was a little cocky, but he’d always had a smart mouth and a healthy ego---and he could back it all up with skill, and that’s what _really_ mattered.

So he’d been cooling his heels and idly counting rounds when his phone started ringing. It wasn’t a number he gave out often, and he’d programmed in ringtones to give him a fair warning if it was a call he’d rather miss. Only a complete idiot would have real names or monikers stored in the memory, so the ringtones were things that only he would be able to associate with the numbers.

Dick got a stirring tribute by Sir Mix-a-Lot, Timbo was “White and Nerdy” by Weird Al, Damian was “Stacey’s Mom” for obvious reasons, and back in the day, Bruce had been given no ringtone at all---he knew better than to think he’d call him first.

But his phone was merrily pealing the opening bars of “Walking on Sunshine,” which meant he _had_ to answer. Jason swore at the fucking _timing_ of it all, yelled, “Just a moment, gentlemen! I have me a lady caller, and you know how women are about getting pushed to voicemail!” and answered the phone with a cheerful, “Hi there, pudding-pop. How’s life treating you?”

There was a beat, a moment of dead air, before Stephanie replied with a hesitant, “It’s been better, I guess.”

He’d figured as much. If she was in England and Batty Jr. was going cuckoo for cocoa puffs, all was not well in the cave. And maybe he’d been hoping that this would happen, at least a little bit. There was something about her that he liked---that he _wanted_. Maybe it was physical; maybe it was the natural effect of having one of the Bats trust him and give a shit about him. Either way, he was no stranger of wanting something and not having it, so the idea of possibly getting a chance at _having_ was one he found appealing.

“Tell me all about it. I’m all ears.”

“Are you in the middle of something?” Steph asked, because the chuckleheads on meth had started peppering him with bullets again.

“Me?” Jason asked, mock-shocked. He stretched out his long legs, twirling his gun around his index finger. “Oh, no, not at all. I can talk.”

“Jay,” she said, her tone flat. “I can _hear_ the gunshots.”

He flicked a quick look at the men, held the phone to his chest to muffle the sound, and dropped one of them. Quick, efficient, and neat. Having a certain _savoir-faire_ about his job was what made him a natural, and not just another thug with a gun.

“Just a bug,” he informed her, holding the phone against the crook of his shoulder as he reloaded.

“You’re capping a bug with a gun?” Steph asked, completely unconvinced.

“It’s a _big_ bug.”

 _“Jason.”_

“Snookums, this is Gotham. This bug is big, armed, and has gang connections in four countries. Everything in Gotham is big and mean and ugly. I promise that it hasn’t changed since you left. I mean, if _anything_ , it’s gotten a little less sunshiney,” he said with a shit-eating grin she couldn’t see.

“I don’t have the energy to argue with you about this,” she said, and she truly sounded like she didn’t.

“Then don’t argue with me, and tell me why you called.”

“I---I don’t know. I just---I’m---”

Jason took the tiny window of her stammered hesitance to take out the other gunman. The things he had to do to get a little peace and quiet to have a conversation.

“Shh, shh, take a deep breath and relax. I’m in no hurry.”

“I’m pregnant.”

It wasn’t every day that someone said something that robbed him of a witty comeback, but Stephanie was full of surprises.

“What?” Jason demanded, standing up and frowning. He’d heard her, of course, but he wanted to make _sure_.

“Preggers,” she said tiredly, tonelessly. Unhappily. “Knocked up. Expecting a little bat-bundle of bat-joy. Need I go on?”

“Seriously?”

“Do you really think I’d joke about this?”

There was a soft edge of pain in the way she said _joke_ that actually, honestly bothered him. Tallying up the clues and facts, he wasn’t surprised. Something had happened that’d pushed Damian into batshit territory, she was three thousand miles and change away, he was suddenly looking like one of the more even-tempered and reasonable vigilantes on the street, and now there was a baby to factor into the whole mess.

God, sometimes he swore that the bat clan was just one big, fucked up soap opera, and he was the only one with enough distance to see it for what it really was: Daddy Issues R’ Us. The irony didn't escape him. He knew he was one of the bunch, but that didn't mean he couldn't accept that about himself.

“No. I don’t think you’d joke about that. I’m just a little---” Angry? Confused? “---surprised that I’m on the phone tree, that’s all. For one reason or another, I don’t get the good news calls very often.”

“Yeah, well.” Stephanie sighed. She really didn’t sound good, and he suffered the unexpected urge to find Damian and put him through a wall or five. Caring did weird things to his head---probably because he was out of practice. “You’re actually the first one in the ‘family’ that I’ve told.”

“Hold on. Back the fuck up for two seconds. _I’m_ the first one to know?” Jason didn’t even know what to do with that information---that _trust._ Of all the possible people, she’d called him. Not her old pal Babsy, not her old boyfriend Timmy, not even--- “Shit. Lemme guess. Babybat’s the babydaddy, and you haven’t told him, either.”

The watery silence said it better than her small, eventual, “He can’t know yet.”

Sometimes, Jason wanted to be a part of the life he’d had before his life had gotten an unexpected sequel. Sometimes, he wanted to be as far away from it as he possibly could. Most of the time, he was stuck in the gravitational pull of the Bat, and once in a while he got pulled in all the way.

“Look. It’s---what, one or two in the morning where you’re at? Lay down, take a metaphorical chill pill, and I’ll be there when you get up. I don’t want to discuss this over the phone.”

There was a hitch in her breathing. “I’m in England. You don’t have to---”

“Yeah, I know,” he interrupted, and started to stack the dirty merch to burn. “You want to talk, so I’m wrapping up this roach motel and hopping the next flight. Shut up about it.”

“Jason, I---”

“Do me a favor and stow the thanks. I don’t do shit for thank you cards. Just go to sleep, preggo. Stress and pregnancy do not a healthy baby make.”

Steph said thank you anyway, because she was stubborn and did what she wanted. Then she hung up, which freed his hands to quickly raze and burn the wannabe meth moguls.

He really hated when he got involved in the affairs of bats. It never ended well for him. He was getting too old for this particular cycle.

 

*

 

Steph tried to sleep, but sleep wasn’t in the cards. Every time she closed her eyes, her eyelids dance with grotesque _maybes_ : all the bad things that could happen if she tried to deal with the demon---what if the demon decided it wanted her baby, even as small and underdeveloped as it was; what if that was how Damian found out; what if it just scooped it out of her; what would she do if she lost this one, how would she deal---all the bad things that could happen if she tried to talk with Damian---what if she’d projected her feelings about their partnership onto him, and he didn’t actually give a damn either way; what if she set up the whole new deal and he backed out; what if he turned out to be as sociopathic and hard-hearted as people painted him; what would she do if she’d been played for three years, how would she deal---what if, what if, what if.

Her head was too busy to shut down, and stress brought on nausea. She ended up just sitting on the floor in the bathroom, a blanket around her shoulders. It cut down on having to make trips from her bedroom to the toilet, and it wasn’t like she was finding rest in her bed, anyway.

It all boiled down to two questions. One: was she willing to throw someone else’s soul under the bus for Damian’s sake? And two: if she was, if she could make herself go there, who would she choose? Would it be worth it? Would she be able to live with herself if she sent someone’s soul to damnation, and ended up with a big fat zero in return---or worse?

The two main questions didn’t have answers. They only prompted endless strings of more questions, and Steph didn’t know what to think or where to go from there.

She’d meant it when she’d told John that she was willing to sacrifice to set things right with Damian. She just hadn’t known that might mean sacrificing another person. Personal sacrifice was one thing, but offering up someone else was another thing entirely.

Steph had been almost asleep, sitting up with her back against the bathroom wall, when her cellphone had started to shrill the opening lyrics of “Bad Reputation.” It was a text message from Jason, not a call, and it gave her the name of a motel in town and a room number.

He’d been true to his word. He really had hopped the next flight to England.

Steph washed her face, braided back her hair, and brushed her teeth twice. She still didn’t feel like a presentable human being, but it was as good as she was going to get on short notice.

Twenty minutes and a bus ride later, she was knocking on the door of his motel room, wondering distantly what the _hell_ she was doing with her life choices.

Pregnant, thousands of miles from home, and willingly walking into a motel room that held one Jason Todd the Probably Untrustable. It sounded like the setup to a Lifetime original movie, and it pissed her off that it was her life, not a canned movie plot. If this was really a Lifetime movie, though, Jason would bare his secret emotive, gentle side and take her away from all the terrible complications. That, or she’d end up pushed down a flight of stairs by a jealous lover she’d never known about.

It was a good thing that her life was its own brand of screwed up, and didn’t take its cues from Pregnant Damsel in Emotional Distress clichés.

The door opened, and there was Jason. She’d somehow forgotten how big he was. It wasn’t something she’d really wanted to be reminded of, since it occurred to her that she hadn’t even told Beryl where she was going. She was batting a thousand as far as terrible decisions went.

“I can’t believe you flew here just to talk to me,” Steph said, because _hi_ felt awkward.

“And I can’t believe you let the pipsqueak’s little swimmers start homesteading in the fertile valley of your uterus, so let’s get over our joint disbelief and move on,” Jason said, and opened the door all the way for her. “You look like shit, by the way. I mean, you’ve got the whole pregnant glow and yadda yadda yadda, but you look like you’re gonna swoon, princess. And you never struck me as the swooning type.”

With Jason, she could never decide when he was insulting her and when he was complimenting her. He could do both in the same breath.

“I didn’t mean to get pregnant,” Steph told him sourly, and tried to not-so-obviously look for a place to sit. There was a single bed, a small round table, and one chair by the table. She took the chair, because it seemed like the safest option. Not that she thought that Jason would go there, especially _knowing_ that she was pregnant, but she had trouble reading him. She didn’t know what to expect from this talk.

“I’ve heard that one before. But face it: you’re percolating the heir to the Wayne family fortune. There are a probably a thousand women who’d rent out their womb for a shot at that grand prize.”

She briefly saw red. Her emotions were more ferocious than usual in just about every direction, but that was a sore spot that Jason should have known better than to jab.

“I. Didn’t. Mean. To,” she said, each word clipped short. She got back up, her tiredness curling up under the heat of how suddenly angry that implication made her. “I’m not a fucking gold digger. I don’t care about the money. It was a goodbye quickie gone wrong, and I’m dealing with the consequences. If you think that I---”

“I don’t think that,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Sit your ass down. I was joking. I know you’re not going to use your little whoopsie as leverage against him. That’d make you _normal_ , and let’s be real. You wouldn’t be talking to me, or doing what you do, if you were normal.”

Steph did sit back down, feeling slightly embarrassed by how quickly she’d flipped, but he didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Nothing about this is normal. This is galaxies away from normal. And that---that _is_ why I called you. I just...” Steph searched for words, but they wouldn’t come.

Jason stretched out languorously on the bed, toeing off his boots and crossing his legs at the ankles.

“I came here for the full story. Lay it on me.”

She didn’t know where to start, so she began where Damian had, when he’d finally come clean.

“When Damian was fourteen years old, Bruce was killed. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t his fault. But he was---he was just a kid, y’know? It scared him. That same night, he went to a crossroads, and he made a deal.”

 

*

 

It took about an hour to get it all out, from beginning to end. Jason was quiet through most of it, nodding where it was appropriate and muttering what was probably threats against Damian’s health and general well-being under his breath. Steph was proud of herself, because she managed to keep even and composed through the entire explanation---even that raw, stilted description of how and why she’d left Gotham.

Jason was silent for a while afterward, arms folded behind his head and gaze tilted toward the ceiling.

“He really fucked it up, didn’t he,” he said, less of a question and more stating fact.

“Yeah, but I think...I mean, _maybe_...he could still pull through it.”

“Do you really want him to?”

The question surprised Steph, because she thought the answer was obvious. If she didn’t _really_ want him to, she wouldn’t have been contemplating damning someone’s soul to the fiery pit. That alone should have shown a whole lot of want.

“I’m just saying,” Jason continued, completely conversational. “That maybe you should take a good hard look at this. So, you’re carrying a kid that’s half him, half you. Being a sperm donor doesn’t mean he’s gonna be a good father to your spawn. He’s civil on a good day, but he couldn’t understand kids when he was one himself. What makes you think he’ll know what to do? You know he’s got a temper on him.”

Steph had trouble swallowing. Her mouth had gone very dry.

“He’s said that he wants kids,” she said slowly, struggling with what he was saying. He was right. He was right, and he was reasonable, and Jason Todd should never be the voice of reason.

“Wanting ‘em in theory and knowing what to do with ‘em when you’re saddled with them are two different things,” he said, sitting up a little and looking at her. “And let’s face it. The timing’s not great. He might think you did it on purpose, to keep him in line. He’s twenty, and you’re almost thirty. You barely escaped making him a teen dad. If I were him? I’d resent that, at least a little bit.”

She had thought these things before---had tried to tune them out, clinging instead to the solidity she’d convinced herself they had between them.

Now, hearing Jason voice her own insecurities, they seemed insurmountable. What the hell was she doing? Who was she fooling?

It was that, the problems she’d been turning a blind eye on to focus on ‘demon deals et all’, that made her sniff hard.

Steph just felt lost. She had thought she had it all figured out for her life, but the past four months or so had jerked the carpet out from under her feet and dropped her on her ass.

Oh, god, this really _was_ turning Lifetime on her.

Jason sighed loudly. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and stood over her chair. He tilted her chin up, and she thought that he might try to say something encouraging, which would have just been _bizarre_ , but then he started kissing her, instead.

And kissing her was more like Jason than playing the part of the soothing maybe-friend.

She didn’t push him away as quickly as she should have. Jason’s hands were big and a little rough, his stubble an interesting rasp, and he was a good kisser. He knew what he was doing, and he was taking his time.

But it hit her as just a tiny bit convenient. Maybe crushing the self-esteem of distraught women and then sweeping up the pieces was a winning formula for him usually, but he’d said it himself: she wasn’t a normal person.

And he didn’t know Damian better than she did.

Steph pressed a hand against his chest---not aggressively, but firmly.

“Look,” she said, taking a deep breath. She felt better, for whatever reason. “Maybe the whole emotional manipulation thing works for you, but I’m not buying it. You’ve got a point. Seriously, you do. Your argument is solid. But, that only applies to normal people. If I’m abnormal, Damian is fucking insane. He said he wanted to have kids with me the _first time_ we had sex, so I’m going to believe that he’ll want this baby until I have evidence to the contrary.”

Jason smirked. He didn’t draw back very far, but he did straighten.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying his luck,” he said, and instead of being pissed off that she’d seen through his scheme, he seemed to be amused. Even at her lowest, Steph was still stubborn and sharp. She didn’t tolerate bullshit.

“Don’t think I’m saying this is a never,” Steph said, because heat had crept into her cheeks and he was still looking at her expectantly. “Just that---I---I love that jerk. I can’t. Not without him. If he’s going to be a martyr or doesn’t want to bargain, we’ll revisit this. But I still have options to exhaust. So. So whatever _this_ is, it’s tabled until further notice.”

Jason took a step back. He was full-out grinning, widely and crookedly.

“Huh,” was all that he said. He picked up his jacket from the floor and laced up his boots. Taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, he tapped it against the flat of his palm a couple of times. “I need a smoke break. I’ll be back in twenty minutes---a half hour, tops.”

So he expected her to wait for him, basically.

Steph knew that she should take the time to check bus schedules and get back to Worden. Things would be awkward when Jason got back---there was only so far that she could feasibly push her luck before it went all Brown on her.

But getting herself up and moving was more of a fight than she had in her at the moment. She stood, but then the bed looked really inviting, and she flopped down with even less grace than usual. Between stress and morning sickness, her energy level had bottomed out. When Jason came back in, she was more than halfway asleep and still telling herself to go check the bus schedule on her phone.

He kicked off his boots, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair. He stretched out on the bed beside her, his weight making the cheap springs in the mattress squeak. Steph rolled closer to him when the bed dipped, gravity pushing her closer to him. Jason’s face was cold, and he smelled like damp night air and menthol cigarettes. She ran her fingers through the vivid white shock of his bangs, kneejerk curiosity she didn’t pull back. He dyed his hair, she knew, but dye didn’t stay for long. She’d wondered why the back and forth between black and red, why the dye at all, but now she knew. He was covering up that broad hank of snowy hair, which she had to assume was natural---and unwanted.

Jason hid his defining marks. Even on the outside of the bat colony, he swung between the extremes of being everything they were not, and mimicking them. It was like he didn’t know what he wanted. She understood the feeling a little too well.

“I’ve got a solution,” he announced, wrapping a hand loosely around her wrist. “And we’re gonna do it. When people ask, I’ll take all responsibility.”

If he was offering to protect her, it was a bad idea. Morally gray at best, criminal at worst. She knew that.

She took a breath, then let it out. Thought about getting up again, but didn’t. She could barely keep her eyes open.

If she trusted him enough to be in the room with him, to fall asleep with him next to her, stretching that trust far enough to cover his solution wasn’t all that difficult. Maybe it was a bad idea in theory, but she didn’t have many options. Trusting him hadn’t blown up in her face.

Not yet, at least.

“What if I shoot it down?”

“You won’t. It’s the best chance babybat has at getting out of the deal. You’ll still be able to look at yourself in the mirror, cupcake. I promise. Nobody’ll die.”

“But we’ll have to offer up someone’s---”

“I know.” Jason kissed the top of her head, putting his arm around her. “Just blame me. Everyone knows that I’m a bad man.”

 

*

 

She slept for about sixteen hours straight, which was far from a personal record, but it was still noteworthy. Jason was snoring next to her when she finally cracked her gummy eyes open again---his jeans were discarded on the floor, but he was on top of the covers instead of under them with her. Steph wouldn’t have assumed that he’d be that respectful, but her new rule of thumb was to never assume anything about him. He was a lot like John, in that regard. And Damian.

And maybe she was developing a type.

He woke up as soon as she started moving, yawning and stretching until his back popped.

“Feel better?” He asked, his voice still sleep-rough.

“Mmhm,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes.

“You look significantly less shitty.”

“You need to remember that I _do_ have the training to crush your balls before you can block me,” Steph said, matching his smirk. “I’m the goddamn Batwoman. I can and will blame it on hormones.”

She felt significantly less shitty, too. Jason had outlined The Plan, and he’d been absolutely right---she _hadn’t_ liked it. But, she realized that of all possible options, it was the most viable one. She didn’t think she’d ever be comfortable with it, but it had a weird kind of justice to it.

It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Bruce hadn’t believed in that gray, but it seemed like it was the murky middle zone that they operated in, anymore.

Steph had agreed to the plan, but on one condition: they had to get Damian on board before they started assembling the necessary people and pieces. If he didn’t want help, they couldn’t force it. It was as simple as that.

And for being a simple thing, it was difficult to contemplate.

“The flight leaves in three hours,” Jason said around another yawn. “If you don’t want to have to share the shower, we’d better get moving.”

She tossed a pillow at him before sitting up. She’d slept in her camisole and underwear, and she was all too aware of his eyes on her---specifically, on her stomach. Without a loose shirt covering it up, the swell of her belly was fairly obvious. She didn’t look _pregnant_ pregnant yet, but she had the makings of a baby bump.

“The clock’s ticking, mommabear,” he said, and didn’t sound like he was laughing anymore.

 

*

 

The flight back to Gotham was just about as bad as the flight over, but at least she knew _why_ she was so airsick, this time around. In retrospect, it was so obvious. Steph should have known after Cass had looked her over, seen the changes in her bearing, and figured it out. On some level, she had been in denial. She hadn’t _wanted_ that to be the reason that she was a sick wreck, because she hadn’t been ready to handle the complications.

But now, she was. At least, she was better equipped to handle what life was pelting her with. She had to remind herself of that a couple of times during the flight, then the ride to Wayne Manor.

Damian had to have seen them coming. That was just assumed, because nobody and nothing went unnoticed by the security systems. One did not simply walk into Wayne property. It just didn’t work that way.

But he wasn’t at the gate to turn them away, and he didn’t answer the front door when she knocked. If he hadn’t been home, the security system would have kicked in. Since it didn’t, she had to surmise that he was there, and throwing what she’d dubbed a bitch fit.

Steph had expected that. The silent-but-seething treatment was one that he’d resorted to more than once.

Unfortunately for him, she _was_ going to talk to him, even if that meant yelling at the house itself until he called the police or started listening. And she knew that he wouldn’t call the police, so it was just a matter of time until she broke his patience and got him to react.

It was easier than she’d anticipated. Out of curiosity, she’d punched in the last security code that had been set before she left.

And the door opened. It shouldn’t have, because Damian changed the codes religiously, but it did.

She walked into the place she’d called home for the past three years, and found herself feeling more heartsore than anything else. Most of the lights were off, and rooms had been left completely untouched. It was eerily quiet, like it hadn’t been lived in for weeks.

But Damian was there. She knew he had to be, especially after she heard a soft _thump_ and a trilling feline question.

Steph couldn’t see him in the dark, but she knew that her furry baby was somewhere in the house, calling for her. It was stupid, because he was just their cat, but she’d missed that more than she’d realized.

“Alfie,” she said, voice low. “I’m home.”

And that was when Jason started swearing a blue streak.

The security codes had been easy to disable, but that wasn’t the only thing keeping the manor safe from intruders. Alfred knew and recognized her, of course, but Jason was a stranger, as far as he was concerned. Alfred didn’t like strangers, and she hadn’t thought to warn Jason. The way he was yelling, he was being attacked by a raptor, not a singularly determined housecat.

“Alfie!” Steph hissed, grabbing for the puffed-up ball of black and white fur and claws before Jason shook him free. “It’s okay! We like him! Stand down!”

Normal couples who had normal pets taught them normal commands. Alfred chose to listen to her, slithering up to perch on her shoulder and groom himself furiously. Once he’d tamed his coat, he headbutted her face and purred noisily.

At least someone was glad that she’d come back.

“I fucking hate your boyfriend,” Jason said, with great feeling. “And I fucking hate your cat. And I need a fucking drink. Tell me you have booze somewhere.”

“If D hasn’t drank it all himself, we do,” she said, and stood in front of the grandfather clock for a few long seconds before she went down. Jason followed two steps behind, gingerly touching the bleeding scratches on his face and neck.

Alfred hopped from her shoulder and lead her down the stairs and straight to Damian. He was standing by the computer console, arms crossed over his chest.

“Get out,” Damian said, before she had a chance to say as much as _hi_. She’d expected him to be angry---she hadn’t said goodbye, not really---but he just sounded tired and resigned. He looked like he hadn’t eaten, shaved, or slept since his television appearance. He was gaunt and unkempt, two things he abhorred. “If you’re here for the cat, you may not have him. He was a gift, if you remember correctly.”

“I’m not here to establish custody rights of our furry child,” Steph said, sighing. “I came to see you.”

“And now you have.” He said, so evenly he sounded robotic. “Get out.”

 _“Damian.”_

“You’re not wanted here, Brown. You made it clear that you don’t want to continue our partnership. I have respected your space, so you will respect mine. If you want your things, take them and go. I don’t fucking care.”

Brown. _Ouch._ Twice-damned harlot at least had some investment in it, some laughter. Using her last name alone was an insult, but one that was gummy and uncomfortable, not sharp. He rarely, if ever, used her last name, because her father wasn’t someone either of them liked to dwell on.

It was more effective than any four-letter word he could have balled up and thrown at her.

“I’ll leave you two kids to sort yourselves out. I’ve got a date with your liquor cabinet,” Jason said, forcibly cheerful. He gave her a look, a _you yell if you need me_ , like he didn’t quite trust Damian to stay in line. She wasn’t positive if she appreciated that, or resented him for it. She wanted to believe that she could handle this situation, but it had already hiked up to a level of aggression she hadn’t braced herself for.

Maybe she should have.

Silence hung between them. Damian said nothing, his body language too stiff to read. He’d thrown up every icy invisible wall possible, and she suffered the awful, gut-twisting idea that maybe he wouldn’t forgive her for leaving. He’d given her more trust than he’d put in any other person alive, and as he saw it she had betrayed that trust.The thought that he might not want anything to do with her ever again made her feel vaguely like she was falling.

Vertigo would turn to nausea if she didn’t cut it off at the quick, so she took a cleansing breath. She’d have to offer up an explanation if she puked on his shoes, and that wasn’t a conversation she was prepared to have right then.

“You haven’t changed the codes, D,” Steph pointed out, finally.

“I’ve been busy.”

“You change the codes twice a week, and it’s been two months.” She breathed in, then plowed on. “You don’t really want me out, do you?”

“A dangerous assumption for you to make, Brown,” Damian growled, and this time she winced reflexively, because it felt like a slap.

But like _hell_ would she come all this way just to let him bully her.

“It’s not an assumption,” Steph said, her voice hard. If he thought he could make her back down by namedropping her daddy issues, he was kidding himself---or didn’t have much ammunition left. “I know that I’m right. You were _too busy_ \---” and she threw that up in air quotes, just so he knew she meant business. “---to do basic security maintenance. Come on. Who do you think you’re talking to? You’re talking to the girl who was locked out _how_ many times, and had to yell until the security cameras picked it up. You chose to keep them the same. Don’t try to bullshit me.”

His mouth bunched and pulled, a sneer that didn’t quite make it to indifference.

“You made your decision. I will not---” Damian paused for a beat. “--- _cannot_ \---change. Thus, we are at an impasse. You’re wasting your time here. I won’t ask you to leave again.”

It was that pause that answered the question of whether or not he had forgiven her. If it’d been just _will not_ , she would have chalked it up to stubbornness and ego, and yes, she would have been wasting her time.

But he’d said _cannot._

“Because the big bad Bat got himself into a deal, and _noooooobody_ can save him now.” Steph’s voice got steadily louder; she gestured widely with both hands. “So you’re just going to let yourself die horribly and go to hell, because you made your bed and are going to sleep in it like a REAL man.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Damian muttered, too tired to sound annoyed.

“You can’t change, but not because you don’t want to change. You can’t, because there’s no hope for you at all,” she continued, hearing her own voice echo back faintly. Leathery wings beat high above their heads.

“Get out,” he said, no tone or inflection at all. If anything, he might’ve been resigned.

“No,” she snapped, and felt her emotions bend in weird, hormonally-driven ways. She wanted to cry and to slap him in equal parts. “Because what you think is complete bullshit. There’s still hope for you, and I want to help. I’m your partner. Let me.”

Damian’s expression crumpled. He bowed his head.

“Stop it. Just---stop it, you insipid twat. You can’t will this situation better,” he said, and then: “I poison everything around me. I’ve accepted this fact. You should, too.”

“Damian,” Steph sighed, dropping down to a less aggressive volume. He seemed sufficiently beaten-down, and yelling at him wouldn’t help. She wanted to reach for him, but she knew that she couldn’t. “You can’t really believe that.”

“How can I not?” He demanded, low and tight and angry. Finally, _something_. “Use your fucking head for once. Your absence has given me time to think, and I realize now that leaving was the correct decision for you to make. If you have any sense whatsoever, you will _stay_ gone.”

Damian really did believe that, and it broke her heart. It was one thing to think poorly of yourself, but another thing entirely to feel like you cursed everyone around you.

“Do you want me to leave?”

She’d posed that exact question to him the night she’d left. He’d said no, but he’d outlined conditions she couldn’t abide by. Now, she was just checking in to see if anything had changed in the past two and a half months---if he’d hit the epiphany she’d been praying for.

If nothing had changed, she wouldn’t be coming back for a third time. She’d disappear, and he would never know about their child. As he was now, he was right---he was dangerous to be around. His self-destructive habits created a blast radius that was impossible to live inside.

“I love you,” he said hoarsely, looking down at his hands. “That has not changed. Nothing has changed, not for me. Dismiss it as youthful inexperience if you must, but I do not believe that _will_ change. Because of that, I want you to go. Please, Stephanie.”

And she knew that. Steph believed him. It scared her to believe that he could love anyone like that, much less _her_ , but she knew it was the truth. That was one of the things that had brought her back. Tarnished soul or not, he deserved a chance at a real life.

“I did what you told me not to do,” Steph said. She couldn’t touch on his admission. Couldn’t dwell on the fact that he’d broken down enough to tell her that he loved her. Not yet. “I started looking for a plan B for your deal.”

Damian’s head jerked up; his eyes were wide. _”No.”_

“And,” she continued on like she hadn’t heard his plead, “I found one.”

He stared at her, mouth partially open. It wasn’t often that unflappable Damian Wayne wore that expression.

“No. No such thing exists. You cannot undo a deal like mine. You don’t know how demons work.”

“I found a way,” Steph repeated, this time firmer. “I don’t know how demons work, but I used my lifeline and phoned a friend who happens to be an expert in demon deals. But it’s up to you if you’ll take it. If you do---and if it works---your deal will be void. You’ll be 100% human again. No more super healing, no more cheating death.”

Silence stuffed in around them again, cottony and thick. Damian stared at her and she didn’t look away. His hands---clenched in white-knuckled fists at his sides---relaxed, and he rubbed them over his face.

“If I do this, will you come back?” Damian asked, cautiously hopeful.

“You can’t do this for me,” Steph warned him, both hands held up. She hated to say it, because _yes_ would have been so easy. _Yes_ would have sealed the deal, would have ensured that everything could have been neatly wrapped up between them, but she couldn’t say it, not in good conscious. Holding herself back was a struggle. “This has to be something you do for yourself, because you want to live and not punish yourself for living. If you don’t do this for yourself, we’re back to square one and the vicious self-hate cycle starts all over again. You’re a good man, and you need to start treating yourself like one.”

“I don’t---I do not---”

His chin trembled and he closed his eyes, trying to compose himself. Stupid, arrogant, self-righteous Damian Wayne was having a complete breakdown in front of her. Two minutes ago, he’d been yelling---yelling at her, raging. But now, he was crying. He sat down heavily in his chair, face in his hands. His shoulders shook, but he made no sound.

She’d known that leaving would hurt him, but she hadn’t expected how much. She’d seen him cry exactly twice, and both times it’d been over the loss of his father and brother. She hadn’t anticipated him crying over _her_ \---that he’d put her absence on the same level as those who were dead and gone forever.

Steph closed the distance between them finally, her hands on his back. His arms slid around her, pulling her close and all but crushing her against him. It made her stomach flip-flop weirdly when he pressed his face against her and cried---she knew he couldn’t possibly know about the baby, but to have him touch her belly like that made her heart forget its usual tempo. She hadn’t expected this kind of unselfconscious breakdown---especially with Jason still lurking---but Damian was rarely able to express how deeply he felt about the people around him. She stroked back his hair, curling around him protectively.

“I do not respect the man I have become,” Damian said, his voice thick and hoarse. “If there is a way, I will take the risk.”

So, that was a yes.

Unfortunately, getting him to throw in with The Plan was the easiest part of it.

 

*

 

Steph had to make Damian swear that he wanted to see The Plan through to its end, because he would’ve balked if he hadn’t been bound by his own word. She could tell that each new element that she revealed was making him more and more uncomfortable, and she’d purposefully kept most of the details from him. He’d been argumentative when she’d told him that their know-how and help was coming from John Constantine, suspicious when she’d insisted that they had to do it as soon as possible, and more critical of the whole thing once they’d chosen a small, abandoned house at the outskirts of the city and began preparing it for their otherworldly caller.

Steph was asking a lot of him. She knew that better than anyone. Damian was a control freak, so to have his soul riding on a plan he barely understood was maddening for him. She could all but _watch_ him discover the holes, the things that she’d kept quiet---he’d asked where Jason had gone to four times just in the time it took John to get the summoning incense burning and the chalk lines lightly mapped out on the uneven wooden floor.

“Jay’s doing errands” stopped being an acceptable answer for him, so Steph finally took his hand and pulled him into one of the empty spare rooms.

The house was condemned and decrepit, about as far away from romantic as possible. Still, she held his hands and managed a smile.

“I don’t like this,” Damian said, his brows rucked together with worry. Helplessness hadn’t been a good fit for him, ever. “I don’t like Jason’s involvement, and I don’t like Constantine much either, though I recognize his expertise in this field. And I,” the worry-crease across his forehead deepened. “I would rather you were not here for this. The fewer people present, the better.”

“I know,” she said, still disarming him to the best of her abilities with a smile. “This’ll be risky. We _are_ dealing with a demon, here. But I’m the one who threw this thing together, so I’m going to see it through. No matter what happens.”

“I---I just---”

“I love you, Dami,” she said, touching his jaw lightly with her fingertips. “This is a good plan. Trust me.”

And then, before he could react or realize what she was doing, she cracked his jaw the same way Cass had done to her so many times so many years ago---a nerve strike. She hit hard, though, as hard as she could. Hard enough that it was overkill, or actual ‘kill’. His eyes rolled back and he crumpled.

“I could’ve done that,” Jason said, leaning in the doorway. She shook her head.

“He would’ve seen it coming and fought you. I wanted it to be as painless as possible, so it had to be me. We won’t have much time before he comes to. Let’s get this going.”

“As the lady wishes,” he said with a flourish. He left the room, and she knelt next to Damian’s unconscious body. Guilt tugged at her, but she knew that if he was fully aware of what was going on, he’d tear it all apart and want to discuss what they were doing and why they were doing it. He wouldn’t think that he was worth the risk, and they’d argue.

She couldn’t let herself---or anyone else---overthink this. They didn’t have the time for it. The window of opportunity was narrow enough as-is, and she didn’t want to fight with Damian over whether or not he deserved the sacrifice.

Jason may have come up with the plan, but she was the one who had gathered up all the pieces and put it into motion. She knew that it wasn’t right by Bruce’s working definition, but none of them were him.

They wouldn’t break his law, but they would pry it apart for any loopholes. Right then, right there, that was what was necessary.

Jason came back with a body slung over his shoulder. She heard them coming, because there was no mistaking _that_ voice.

“It’s been so _long_ since we’ve seen each other. Don’t you want to _catch up?_ I only want to know how you’ve been---nothing up my sleeve this time. It’s only the breeze we’d be shooting, I swear!”

Jason unloaded the Joker without any grace or care. The skinny man was half stripped and bound four different ways. They hadn’t wanted to take any chances at all.

“If I don’t ask for the nitty-gritty details of what you’ve got planned, can I watch?” Jason asked with a sharp, dangerous grin. He was vibrating with tension, a screaming red emotion that being near the Joker brought out in him. He hadn’t been able to defeat his monster, hadn’t been able to do what he felt that Bruce should have done.

He hadn’t been able to do what Steph was about to be party to. She was dizzy and nauseous just thinking about it, but she crushed all obvious signs. She had to put on her strongest face. If she didn’t act like she was confident that this would work, it wouldn’t. She knew all about self-defeating prophecies.

“Yeah,” Steph said, looking at the thin, ugly man on the ground. Tied up and prone, he didn’t seem as terrifying. “You should be here for this. I figured you’d want to be.”

“What’s the plan?” The Joker said, his teeth stained a filmy pink with blood. He craned his neck to look around him, taking in the chalk lines that John had drawn on the floor and walls. “Oooh, ritual sacrifice? You don’t say! If _only_ you’d told me ahead of time, I would’ve worn my good suit. Blood doesn’t show up as well on purple, don’t you know.”

He keened with shrill, painful laughter. Jason tensed further, grimacing. She wondered if he heard that laughter in his nightmares, the way she heard Black Mask’s oily little chuckle.

“I wouldn’t trade this moment for the world. Cupcake, you know me so well,” Jason said---and it would’ve been a drawl if he hadn’t been grinding his teeth---and slammed the steel-reinforced toe of his boot into the Joker’s gut. The laughter cut off into a high wheeze, like a dog’s chew-toy being squeezed.

“It looks to the Proud Prince of Pranks that you’re looking to cut a deal,” The Joker said, his voice lowering to a rumbling octave Steph swore she felt in her ribs. “I already sold my soul once, my precocious little pranksters!” And again, that grating laughter. “ _For a box of cigars!_ Don’t you know a joke’s only funny if it comes in ones or threes? Two is _never_ funny.”

“It’d explain why he’s still here,” Steph muttered to Jason, forcing herself to look away from the sallow-faced monster on the floor. “Shouldn’t he be like sixty or something?”

“No, whatever keeps him farm fresh has been there since the first time he showed up in Gotham. So I’m gonna guess that he found a way out of his gentleman’s agreement with whatever demon he handed his soul over to.”

“Neron,” Steph said. Jason didn’t turn, and she couldn’t see his eyes behind the white-out lenses of his domino mask, but she could feel him search her for an answer. She could feel his question, but she wasn’t going to address it.

The Joker had been ignoring her for the most part, all of his leering attention focused on the bird that’d gotten away. And, well, Jason had been standing half in front of her---the stance felt protective, but she didn’t want to label it as such---so she’d been easy to miss behind his bulk. The fact that the clown was staring hard at her was proof enough that she’d tracked down the right demon.

John had given her two qualifiers when it came to demon deals. Firstly, you had to be willing to sacrifice to seal the deal. Secondly, you had to know who you were dealing with. When he’d dealt with the Joker, Neron had been the ruler of Hell. The Big Guy Downstairs. According to John, there’d been an uprising, and leadership had switched hands. Neron had died, rendering the contract Joker had made void. Conveniently, the demon that’d done business with Damian when he’d been fourteen and terrified was Neron’s replacement.

“Who _is_ your little friend?” The Joker asked, his tone conversational on the surface. This was the man who found murder hilarious, so a mild demeanor meant nothing. She felt the threat he left unvoiced, and wished that John would hurry and finish up. “I feel like we’ve met, honeybritches, but I juuuuust can’t put my finger on it! Give ol’ Mr. J a _clue_ , won’t you?”

Jason leaned into her, a hand on her hip, and murmured into her ear like he was calming down a skittish horse.

“Don’t let him get in your head, Steph. He won’t get back out. Let’s do this and be done.”

The Joker erupted with hysterical laughter again. It was part sob, part shriek, part inhuman nails dragging relentlessly down a chalkboard.

“Stephanie Brown!” He said, too-wide smile leering. “I _knew_ I knew I knew you. You were the sweetest little Robin I could hope for, but then Black Mask stole you away before we could meet. I almost killed him for that, you know?”

Steph couldn’t breathe. All the air had been sucked out of her lungs, punched out of her throat.   
Years ago, those had been the words she’d wanted to hear. She’d wanted to hear them so _badly_ , but neither Tim nor Bruce had given her that.

The _Joker_ had tried to avenge her death?

She couldn’t manage laughter or tears. She stood, staring.

“Oh, I’m just tickled pink,” the Joker trilled, rolling like an excited child. “I finally have a chance at a clean sweep once again! Since there haven’t been any new Robins in _aaaaages_ , I’ll just start from the last and work my way back up. I wonder whatever happened to the last one. He was such a little scamp. And so handy with a crowbar!”

That was where the Hood’s self-imposed calm fractured.

“Listen up, fuckface,” Jason snarled, his hand fisted in the clown’s hair. “You’re not doing shit. After tonight? You’re _done._ Curtain call. Hear that, chuckles? It’s the fat lady, and she’s singing your song.”

“The joke’s on you, kiddo. The laughs will never stop rolling! Not tonight, not ever!”

“Kind of the definition of final words there, innit?” Constantine asked mildly, leaning against the doorframe. He ground out his cigarette with a nod to Steph. He might have been a complete bastard, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a gentleman once in a while, when the mood hit him. “I’m all through with my bit. Shall I pitch in a hand dragging the bodies to the living room, then?”

“Help me with D,” Steph asked, because she knew there was no way she could move him on her own. He had at least fifty pounds on her---maybe a little less, considering how he’d been taking care of himself in her absence. “Leave the Joker in here. I don’t want him to know about him until the ball’s already rolling.”

“Lemme,” Jason said, nudging her hands away. He hefted Damian up and over his shoulder with relative ease. “Shouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting in your delicate condition.”

“Of all the things she shouldn’t be doing in her condition---but is doing anyway, peach that she is---heavy lifting is low on the list tonight, m’lad,” John pointed out, but not unkindly.

“I know,” Steph said, swallowing hard. “Believe me, I know.”

The house had been someone’s home, once upon a time, and when she’d first walked in she had seen the signs of life here and there. The big quake had made the neighborhood unlivable, so it was a ghost town of skeletal homes, mostly grown over and consumed by the greenery that was all too common now that Ivy had gone wild. John had transformed it in less than twenty minutes, pushing sunken-in couches and chairs to the corners of the room. The walls and floor were decorated with the lines of a magic circle, and there were sticks of summoning incense burning at the center. They bellowed steady, curling ribbons of smoke that brought tears to Steph’s eyes.

John stood in the center of the circle, a sword in one hand. Jason dumped Damian in one of the mostly-rotted chairs, and he groaned. He was starting to come to.

“Didn’t bother with the cats,” John mentioned offhandedly. “Never had a taste for it, and they scream bloody murder when you impale ‘em. It’s just to impress the locals, if you know what I mean. Not necessary, any of it.”

“Cats?” Steph repeated. She must have looked green, because he grinned.

“This’ll get a lot worse than dead kittens before it’s through. If you’re going to be sick, get it out of your system. Preferably outside the circle, luv. I don’t want to have to draw it all up again, and it’s not the time or place to experiment with new elements.”

“...Stephanie?” Damian demanded, holding his jaw and sitting up. “What in God’s name do you---”

“Let’s just jump right in it, then, shall we?” John said, and slit his own wrist with the edge of the blade. His blood was like tar, more black than red, and it hissed and bubbled when it hit the chalk on the floor. “Blaze, you Godless whore-queen of the pit, I’m calling your marker! Come up and have a talk! There’s plenty in it for you, you selfish wretch.”

Steph wasn’t sure, but that didn’t seem like a good way to call a demon. She was starting to get an idea of why people didn’t team up with him very often---or why they didn’t live very long around him.

The response was instantaneous, though. Say what you wanted about his methods, but John Constantine got results. Part of the floor caved, spitting sparks and a noxious steam that smelled strongly of rotten eggs.

A woman rose from the hole, pushed upwards by a hundred twisted, broken arms. When Damian had said he’d made a deal, she---and even _thinking_ about it now made her feel like an idiot---had imagined a man with a pitchfork. He hadn’t given any details, so she had no idea that he’d sold his soul to a orange-skinned demoness with long black hair and ram’s horns. She was beautiful, but in the way a natural disaster was beautiful: the sheer force of what it was capable of, what it could destroy, swept away the ruined bodies and left awe and fear in equal parts.

Hell currently had a Queen.

This was news to Steph.

“Who,” the demoness asked, her voice slippery-slick. It was physically painful, but Steph couldn’t put into words what it felt like. It just _hurt_ , splintering in her head like a spike being driven at the base of her skull, tiny fireworks of agony that sizzled and bit. “Are _you?_ This ritual is an insult. You’re either a stupid worm, or an insolent one.”

“All insolence is on me, luv,” John said, his grin crooked. “But I’m merely the operator connecting this call.”

“I am Ibn al Xu’ffasch,” Damian said levelly as he stood, like he didn’t feel the demoness the way the rest of them did. He could call up that ice and haughtiness that made him _him_ no matter the situation. “Damian Wayne, Son of the Bat and heir to the House of al Ghul. You have dealt with me once before, and you shall do so again.”

“Oh, _you,_ ” the demoness rumbled, physically crawling up her skin and hissing tiny hot needles into each and every pore. “I remember you, boy. What makes you think you have something I want? I already have your grubby little scrap of soul meat.”

Damian hesitated, but only because he didn’t know. Waking him up just in time for the main event had ensured that.

“We’re here to barter,” Steph said, chin raised.

And that’s when Jason came in with the ace.

She saw it all play out on Damian’s face---shock made him weirdly transparent, one thing that his various trainers hadn’t managed to beat out of him. It was probably because not a lot rocked Damian, so moments of dangerous clarity were rare. But he looked at Jason, looked at the Joker---and there was a recoil of disgust across his features---then looked at her. He was demanding an answer, but the panic in his eyes said that he already knew.

He was the bright one between the two of them, after all.

“And what makes you think that _this_ thing will tickle my fancy?” Lady Blaze asked, her terrible voice stretched into a bored drawl.

“This is the Joker,” Steph said, and smiled. She put on the air of a saleswoman, gesturing with a practiced turn of her wrist. Daddy had taught her all about confidence tricks, so she knew how to sell a lemon if she had to. “Fell in a vat of chemicals, came out homicidal---you know the whole shebang, right?”

“Don’t try my patience,” the demoness said, which she translated as _yes._

“Right. So, he sold his soul a couple years back, to your predecessor. The deal was broken when Neron died, but you and yours wouldn’t have gotten him, anyway. He’s got this _thing_ , this ability to not age and not die, and that means that you demons got gypped.”

The tarfire pits of her eyes narrowed, and the cooked meat-and-hair smell intensified. Steph swallowed frantically, breathing choppily. Had to keep it together. _Had to._

“And I know,” she said, not letting her voice quiver. “I know that your people hate that kind of thing. Being shortchanged, I mean. It’s gotta be a blow to the pride---speaking as an insolent worm and-or useless sack of mortal meat, you’re pretty impressive. Compared to you, I’m nothing. I know that. I accept that. I’m not trying to cheat you.”

“Go on,” Lady Blaze instructed, and she sounded _curious._ Curious was good. She could work with curiosity.

“So. So here’s my deal. I’ll exchange the soul and functioning immortality of this cheater---” and she pointed to the Joker, who seemed so frail now, so wholly impotent. Then she pointed to Damian. The real, tangible fear in Damian’s eyes scared Steph by proxy, but she had to keep pressing her advantage. He was scared _for_ her, but she only had one shot at this thing. He’d understand, later. Hopefully. If there was a later for either of them. “---for the soul and functioning immortality of _this_ cheater. And I know that sounds like a straight switch, but it’s not. Hear me out.”

The room had gotten hot, but hot in a way that transcended heat. It was difficult for her to think, and harder yet to breathe. Steph wasn’t sure when her nose had started bleeding, but she didn’t realize it until she tasted salt and copper when she licked her lips. She felt like passing out would be a blessing, but she couldn’t.

Fingers laced with hers, cool by comparison. Damian said nothing, but he stood beside her and held her hand tightly.

He trusted her. More than anyone else ever had, he trusted her.

“Either way, you win,” Steph said, wiping her face on the back of her free hand. “Take this offer, and you’re guaranteed the Joker. If you give Damian back his soul, there’s still a chance that you’ll end up with him, too. He’s on your naughty list, right? If he doesn’t get his shit in line before he dies, he’s yours for all of eternity.”

Lady Blaze seemed to think about this offer, toying with the idea. Everything that Steph had said had been true, and delivered with 100% honesty. She’d laid down her whole hand, and even appealed to the demoness’ vanity and ego. That had been her A game, and if it wasn’t enough she could at least find some dim comfort in the fact that she’d given it all she had.

“The contract between us will stand as such, immutable from this point forward. You, Stephanie Brown, will sacrifice the mortal soul and abilities of this man---” The demoness’ smile showed an impossible amount of teeth. “---the Joker. The soul of Damian Wayne will be returned to him in recompense, but his previous deal with me will be rendered null and void. Do you accept these terms?”

“Yes,” Stephanie said, and the Joker started howling. The sound wasn’t human. It was frustration and rage and fear at the most primal levels.

 _“No!_ Don’t I get a SAY? This can’t be the punchline! You can’t do this! You---!” Jason grabbed him, slamming his head against the floor. The clown’s voice dribbled off into a wet, limpid, “But this isn’t funny. This isn’t funny at all.”

Lady Blaze’s predatory smile said that she thought it was very, very funny.

“Then it is done,” she said, and the blood and chalk lines themselves started to twist and shriek.

 

*

 

"C'mon, sunshine. Wakey wakey."

Damian dragged in the last of his first breaths, shivering and disoriented. He _hurt_. His throat was raw and his chest was incandescent; he vaguely remembered screaming until his voice broke. It'd been more agonizing than anything he’d experienced before, and he had met and crushed the human capacity for pain many times over. The demoness hadn’t touched him, but he’d still felt her rooting around in his chest, cracking back each individual rib and _pushing_ something both intangible and impossibly heavy inside him. Coming back from the dead in a dozen different ways had hurt less than having his soul returned to him.

But, he was alive. He was alive, and it was raining.

"What happened?" Damian croaked, struggling to make sense of what was going on. The roof and most of the upper storey of the house had been ripped back, letting in a steady drizzle. He was on the floor, his head and shoulders resting on someone’s thigh. He knew that it was his partner’s lap without glancing to confirm, but he forced himself to turn to look at her, anyway.

Stephanie was haggard-looking and pale, her hair a ratty mess clinging to her face and neck. Her nose was crusted with dried blood, and her clothes were soaked through.

"Oh, lots," she said with a slightly hysterical laugh. She rubbed one eye with the heel of her hand. Movement was agonizing, but Damian sat up and put an arm around her, drawing her close. Her skin was cold. Too cold. They shivered in tandem, vibrating on the same frequency. "Congrats on your soulification. How's it feel?"

"Terrible," he rasped. He’d almost lost his voice entirely.

"You're welcome," Steph said, and she managed to smile.

Damian’s thoughts were molasses-slow. Each one had to be addressed individually. Christ, he was _tired._

“Where’s Constantine?”

“I have no idea. Think he left when things with the demon looked semi-dicey. Can’t say I blame him.”

"And Todd?"

"Doing errands,” she said, which he understood meant that Jason was relocating the now-mortal, now-geriatric Joker. He hoped that the Hood dropped him off at the Commissioner’s doorstep, but he didn’t care if he got that far. “Think you can walk? I need to pass out, or throw up, or throw up and pass out. I'm pretty much done with today."

"I can walk," Damian said, though he wasn't completely sure of it. He worked his way to his feet, and when they supported his weight, he held out his hands to help her up. They more or less propped each other up. It was pitiful. After about three miles of walking through the rainy night, Stephanie stopped without warning, doubled over, staggered over to the curb, and was violently sick.

Damian hesitated, then combed back the wet straw tangle of her hair. He spread a hand over her back, stroking the curve of her spine as she heaved. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, not offering so much as an unfunny quip about how she’d already met one of her goals. Steph’s face was almost gray, her lips bloodlessly pale.

“Come here,” he said, leaning over and offering her his hands again.

“You can’t carry me,” Steph said tiredly. “You’re barely vertical yourself, mister. Just gimme a few seconds to settle my stomach and I’ll be fine.”

“No,” Damian said, digging deep and finding his favorite old air of condescending. “I can carry you. You’re ill.”

She looked at him, and it hurt to look back at her. He’d never seen her so wholly exhausted. Setting his wrongs right had put her through the wringer. She’d sentenced a man’s soul to damnation---for _him._ He hadn’t known that she had that in her, and wished that he had never found out. He was proud of her, but it was tinged with shame. He would never know if those depths had always existed in her, or if he’d dragged her to them.

He understood why his father hadn’t been able to fully trust her, but what Father had seen as rogue tendencies, he saw as loyalty.

He’d repay that loyalty, if she’d let him.

“I’m your partner. Let me,” Damian said, when she didn’t reply. “Please.”

Wordlessly, Stephanie slid her arms around his neck and let him pick her up. She was heavy in his arms, her solid weight making his already spasming muscles scream, but he didn’t let it show. He couldn’t, not when he had endured far worse. He couldn’t, not when it’d been so long since he’d held her. He would carry her as far as he had to.

“I missed you,” she mumbled against the side of his neck. “You and your stupid face.”

“And I, you,” he agreed, glad when he saw the faint pinpricks of headlights in the distance. He wasn’t sure where they were at, but the Batmobile had been able to find them. “And your stupid face.”

When the Batmobile stopped in front of them, engine purring, he set her on her feet again. The locks popped open automatically, and he got behind the wheel.

He turned the car to autopilot, because for once he didn’t trust himself to stay focused enough to drive. Stephanie stayed in the passenger seat for all of thirty seconds before crawling into his lap again. Damian leaned his seat back and held her. The familiar, predictable pattern of her breathing made his body ache for sleep all the more. He knew that with her there, it would be real sleep, _good_ sleep.

If she stayed. That wasn’t a discussion that they’d finished, and neither of them were in any shape to argue it out. But she wanted to be near him, and that was encouraging. He’d missed it. Physical contact had been rare and mostly unwanted for most of his life, but once he’d acclimated to it, it’d become a very real _need._ Maybe his body or his psyche was making up for lost time---frankly, he didn’t care about the whys or hows of it, and merely knew that he was grateful to have it again.

It felt like everything should have changed after the deal was broken. It felt like life should never have been the same again, but that wasn't the case. Life went on, the world kept spinning, and their nightly routine played out like it always had. They stumbled back to the cave, shucking off ruined clothing and leaving a trail from the entryway to the washroom. Damian watched Stephanie wash her bloodied face, though his eyes kept sliding shut. He couldn't remember _ever_ feeling so exhausted. He didn't have the energy to ask where they were now and if they were okay again, so he allowed her to lead him to his room, his bed.

They almost literally fell into bed together, getting into their familiar tangle of limbs and legs. She kissed him once, lingeringly, but he couldn’t force himself to keep awake for more than that. He was dimly aware of her touching his face with her cold fingertips, of her mumbling something along the lines of, “You can sleep now, stupid. I’m not going anywhere.”

And for the first time in months, he slept peacefully.


End file.
